Land, Law and Community Among the Accompong Maroons in Post-Emancipation

Jamaica

By

Michelle Thompson

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of History

New York University

January, 2012

Ada Ferrer

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERSThe quality of this reproduction is dependent on the quality of the copy submitted.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscriptand there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,

a note will indicate the deletion.

All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected againstunauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest LLC.789 East Eisenhower Parkway

P.O. Box 1346Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346

UMI 3502731Copyright 2012 by ProQuest LLC.

UMI Number: 3502731

 

©  Michelle  Thompson   All Rights Reserved, 2012

  iii  

DEDICATION For my grandmother, Imogene Hill, a Mooretown Maroon who inspired me to

take this journey. I also dedicate this to my mother who related some of their

narratives to me; and for my son, James, that he may always remember his

connection to Jamaica’s Maroons.

  iv  

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

While working on this project, many people asked me what it was like

going back to school after having been in the workforce. I told them it felt like

I was on sabbatical and that is a tribute to each member of my committee. Ada

Ferrer, Michael Gomez, Sinclair Thomson, and Aisha Kahn, you have all

enriched my world beyond what I could have expected as a graduate student.

Jennifer Morgan I am appreciative that you agreed to take on my project at all.

I also want to thank James Robertson from University of the West

Indies, Mona whose voluminous knowledge of archives containing colonial

Jamaican sources is absolutely astounding and whose encouragement was

desperately needed and greatly appreciated. I must also acknowledge Kenneth

Bilby who also pointed me towards great sources and allowed me to pick his

brain when necessary. Many Accompong Maroons spent tens of hours with me

as I recorded interviews and poked around their community including Colonel

Peddie, Melville Courri, George Huggins, Bill Peddie, Harris Cawley, Carlton

Smith, James Chambers, Mark Wright, Hansel Charles (Rupee) Reid, and

Constantia Foster. Without your cooperation, there would be no dissertation

and I am forever in your debt.

Marsha Vassal, at the Jamaica National Archives in Spanish Town,

Jamaica has been invaluable with her unending patience and deep knowledge

of that archive. I must appreciate my dissertation group, particularly Anne

  v  

Eller, Frances Sullivan, and Kiron Johnson who provided unbelievable support

and encouragement thorugh this process. Michal worked with me at the most

difficult juncture of writing and her input was invaluable. Numerous people

have literally lent their shoulder to cry on while I wrote this work including

Tokumbo, Karen, Caryn, Chris, Nikki, Sonya, Moira and Rose. My deepest

love and gratitude goes to my mother and sister as their infectious excitement

about my project motivated me to keep going. Finally, no words can express

the gratitude and love I have for Fran and James as we have developed this

project as a family. Without them, it would have been impossible.

  vi  

ABSTRACT

Jamaican Maroons - slaves who ran away from plantations and their

descendants won their freedom after eighty-four years of warfare. That war ended in a

1739 treaty guaranteeing land to the communities. In return for their freedom, the

treaty required that the Maroons capture and return runaway slaves and quell slave

rebellions. After the British emancipated the slaves in 1838, the Jamaican government

rethought the role of the Maroon communities. Desperate for labor, the government

sought to dismantle and incorporate the Maroons communities into Jamaican society

by reconfiguring their communal lands to individual allotments that would require

individual Maroons to pay property taxes. It was hoped that Maroons would fail to

pay taxes; the land would revert to the state; and they would have to work on

plantations to support themselves. This dissertation examines this post-emancipation

agenda and the way it framed four disputes about Maroon lands and taxation from

1842 – 1905.

The Accompong Maroons engaged in resistance to these incursions on their

community by ignoring Jamaica’s legal land requirements that did not comport with

the terms of the treaty; by acquiring more land by adverse possession at a time when

the colonial state systematically disenfranchised freed Blacks of land; by threatening

warfare; and by preventing the government from surveying their lands, particularly if

the survey did not expand their land holdings in accordance with their original

understanding of the treaty. As government officials both in London and Jamaica

  vii  

sought to avoid warfare with the Maroon communities, they failed to eliminate the

Maroons, who today still reside in Jamaica on treaty granted lands.

  viii  

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv ABSTRACT vi LIST OF FIGURES xii

PROLOGUE 1 CHAPTER 1: THE 1655 – 1739 MAROON WARS AND LESSONS THE MAROONS LEARNED 5  Introduction 5 British Narratives about the War 8  Maroon Fighting Strategies 11  Science 13  The Treaty 19 Conclusion 28 CHAPTER 2: LAND, LABOR, AND RACE. ABROGATING THE 1739 MAROON TREATIES (1842 – 1856) 31 Introduction 31 The 1842 Land Allotment Act 33  Maroons as a Racially Distinct People? 36  “Equal” By Law 42  Challenges with Contextualizing the Land Allotment Act 49  Ridding the Maroons of “Innumerable Distinctions” 53  

  ix  

Why Assimilating Maroons Meant Restructuring Land 56  Maroon Concerns about the Land Allotment Act 62  Conclusion 66 CHAPTER 3: THE COOK’S BOTTOM LAND DISPUTE, RESISTANCE, AND THE FALLOUT (1868 – 1905) 69 Introduction 69 The Shift to Crown Colony Government and its Implications 72 The Jamaican Government’s Basis for Claiming Cook’s Bottom 76 The Accompong’s Basis for Claiming Cook’s Bottom 81 Accompong Resistance to Relinquishing Cook’s Bottom 83 How to Manage the Maroons 88 Convincing the Accompong to Comply With the Land Allotment Act 90 The Accompong: a Taxing Challenge 94 Potential Resolution to the Cook’s Bottom Land Issue 97 Conclusion 107 CHAPTER 4: COLONEL ROWE’S TAX PETITIONS: TREATY BASED OBJECTIONS TO PAYING TAXES (1870 – 1883) 110 Introduction 110 Rule of Law and Taxation (Pre-1883) 110 Accompong Challenge to Taxes: The Treaty (1870) 114 Government Services for Taxes (1878 - 1879) 116 Forcing Tax Collection I (1882) 120 Use of Force for Tax Collection (1882) 121

  x  

Forcing Tax Revenue II (1882) 123 Accompong Silences About the Land Allotment Act 126 The Attempt to Remove Military Service As An Obstacle to Tax Collection

(1883) 129

Enforcing Tax Collections From the Accompong (1883) 132

Conclusion 137

CHAPTER 5 – THE FULLERSWOOD LAND DISPUTE: THE RISE OF INDIRECT RULE (1884 – 1899) 139 The Dunn’s Parcel of Fullerswood 140 Trespass at Fullerswood and the Rule of Law (Judicial Branch) 145 Diplomacy with the Accompong 148 A group of Accompong Maroons Threaten to Take Laconia

Mountain, Fall 1895 152

Fears of Rebellion Spread to London 153 Indirect Rule I 156 Schism Between the Police and the Rest of the Jamaican

Government 160 Indirect Rule II 166 Another Nod to the Rule of Law – Inheritance 171 One Final Demand for Fullerswood 174 Conclusion 179 CHAPTER 6: THE STRATHDON LAND CONFLICT (1895 – 1902) 182 Introduction 182

  xi  

Contested Trodance, 1895 183 How to Deal With the Accompong When They Trespass (1896) 185 Maroons Are Not Really Maroons 187 Role of Clergy 188 Accompong Claims Grow More Ambitious, 1900 193 Colonial Response 197 Conclusion 205 CONCLUSION 208 Sources, Temporality, and Interdisciplinarity 210 Resistance 215 Rule of Law 218 Must Power Be Part of the Hidden and Public Transcript? 222 WORKS CITED 263

  xii  

LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1 General Map of Jamaica 33 Fig. 2 1757 Map of Accompong 42 Fig. 3 Undated Map of the Accompong and Cook’s Bottom Area 88 Fig. 4 Fullerswood Park 169

  1  

Introduction

Maroons were enslaved men and women who ran away from plantations

throughout the Americas, and in some places, formed their own permanent

communities. They represented a regular threat to the institution of slavery. Centuries

after the end of slavery, Maroon communities continue to exist. Jamaica is home to

four modestly sized Maroon societies that live in its mountainous interior. Mooretown,

Scotts Hall, and Charlestown are located in the Blue Mountains in the northeast part of

the island. The largest community of approximately 600 inhabitants, the Accompong,

is based in the Cockpit Mountains in northwest Jamaica.1 The Accompong are the

most likely to be visited by tourists because they are located two hours south of the

tourist mecca Montego Bay. Every year on January 6, they hold a large public

commemoration of Cudjoe’s birthday. Cudjoe’s importance as the community’s

founding leader resonates well beyond Accompong, as hundreds of non-Maroons join

in this annual celebration.

All the Maroon communities live apart from Jamaica’s population, on land

won by their ancestors nearly 300 years ago. The entire community, as Maroons, owns

hundreds of acres; no individuals own any part of it. They look no different to the

naked eye than the Jamaicans surrounding their communities. Maroons grow some

crops to support their community including yams, bananas, and other foodstuffs.

                                                                                                               1 The cockpits, visible in a flight over northwest Jamaica, are made of limestone and have narrow cylindrical depressions in the center caused by water that eroded the stone. The mountain range derives its name from this geological formation.

  2  

Chickens roam around the grounds and provide an important part of the community’s

ability to feed itself. Maroons eat cuisine that is typical Jamaican fare including rice

and peas and fricassee chicken. After a meal, they might drink Wray and Nephew

White rum,2 Red Stripe beer or beer from another local Jamaican brewery, a Dragon

lager. There are three Protestant churches in Accompong that are mostly attended by

Accompong’s women. Some residents are employed outside of Accompong

performing work ranging from schoolteachers and police officers, to contract

construction work in outlying areas. Some Maroons own businesses in Accompong,

including shops, bars, and guest houses where tourists can stay. The community

employs tour guides who take outsiders around the community showing sites such as

the ethnic burial grounds, and the place where Cudjoe and his council met to plan

military strategy during the Maroon Wars, the Kindah Tree. Yet, their history, and

their version of history, differentiates them from the rest of the population. In that

version, the land on which they live, how they won it and why they remain there as a

community are central.

When the British won Jamaica from Spain in 1655, Africans were already

living there, but there was no system of plantation slavery. As Jamaica was

transformed from a Spanish backwater to a British sugar colony, these Africans and

their descendants fled to Jamaica’s mountainous interior and formed independent

societies. As the British continued to import Africans to Jamaica, many of them,

determined to live life on their own terms, ran away and joined the already formed                                                                                                                2 Wray & Nephew is a company owned by the Appleton Estate, a sugar plantation devoted to making spirits located 45 minutes to one hour south of Accompong.

  3  

Maroon communities. In order to survive, they grew vegetables, hunted wild hogs, and

stole goods and slaves from nearby plantations to further develop their communities.

These are the societies that became known as Maroons. They posed an intolerable

threat to the institution of slavery and so the British declared war to eliminate the

Maroons. The British and Maroons fought for nearly eighty-five years, from 1655 –

1739, and when they could fight no more, agreed to a peace treaty. That treaty held

that the Maroons would remain free and could continue living in the mountainous

areas to support their communities. In return for freedom, the Maroons would be

required to suppress slave rebellions and return runaway slaves.3 The treaty converted

the Maroons into a quasi-military force designed to maintain the institution of slavery,

the government’s justification for allowing an isolated free Black community in the

midst of an island of masters and slaves.

When the British abolished slavery in 1838, they needed to develop a new role

for the Maroon communities. There were no more slaves to return to masters or slave

rebellions to squash. There was no longer an enslaved population from which Maroons

needed to be distinguished; all were legally free.

As everywhere in the aftermath of emancipation, who would labor on

plantations became the critical question. The formerly enslaved resisted working on

plantations, opting instead for peasant livelihoods and thereby creating a severe labor

                                                                                                               3 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).

  4  

shortage. In this context, the Jamaican government unilaterally decided to eliminate

the Maroon communities, hoping this would force Maroons to become laborers on

plantations. In 1842, the Jamaican Assembly passed the Land Allotment Act intended

to assimilate the Maroons into the Black Jamaican community by changing their land

holdings. No longer would Maroons own their treaty-granted lands as a community,

but instead each individual would be entitled to five acres for their own use and they

would be required to pay taxes on those parcels. The Maroons, instead of having rights

and responsibilities delineated by a particular agreement, would have the same rights

and responsibilities as the Queen’s subjects.4 Authorities hoped there would not be

former slaves and former Maroons, but that both would become Black agricultural

laborers. Jamaica’s governmental agencies, including the Surveyor General, the

Collector General, and the police tried to enforce this law. There was support as well

from London, but the Privy Council and the Colonial Secretary’s Office were more

often concerned with maintaining peace with Maroons and avoiding another military

conflict, and so there was limited support for enforcement of the Land Allotment Act.

The main obstacle to enforcement of the Land Allotment Act came from the

Maroons themselves. They refused to sign up for individual parcels of land and

continued to live on treaty-granted land as a community, constantly ignoring the legal

dictates of the Jamaican government. In fact, the Maroons even managed to expand

                                                                                                               4 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842).

  5  

their land holdings. Through multiple means of resistance and their manipulation of

the law, the Maroons refused to become Jamaican.

The treaty embodies the Maroon’s historical relationship with Jamaica and for

centuries continued to make their existence possible. When the government tried to

change the community’s land holdings or prohibit them from acquiring more land,

Maroons turned to the treaty to limit what authorities could do. The late nineteenth

century land disputes with the Maroons are critical to understanding their longevity.

This work details the particular struggles between Accompong and the government to

keep Maroon land and communities intact.

At its core, this work is an exposition of the clash of two opposing historical

visions of Jamaica’s Maroons that were dealt with in disputes about land and taxation.

Colonial society was always concerned with Maroons situating themselves outside the

colonial vision of Blacks’ roles in society. Maroons refused to be enslaved while slave

societies existed, and at emancipation, they refused to be part of a landless peasantry

who worked on plantations. The Maroon vision once again potentially defined

freedom for the formerly enslaved outside the expectations of the colonial

government. Nevertheless, from 1842 – 1905, the Jamaican government sought to

deprive all the Maroon groups of their treaty granted lands so that they would join the

Black peasantry in working on plantations, enriching Jamaica’s planter class.

However, the Maroons insisted that the treaty remain the guide for the

relationship between the two groups. The Accompong resisted or ignored any action

taken by the Jamaican government that did not uphold the terms of the treaty as they

  6  

saw it. Therefore, they insisted that the government deliver on their understanding of

the treaty including land boundaries well outside the written agreement and their

insistence that they owed no tax burden under the treaty. As a result, the Accompong

expanded their land holdings by acquiring Cook’s Bottom and part of Strathdon for

the use of their community through adverse possession, a practice the colonial state

called squatting. They also succeeded in withholding tax payments from Jamaica, as

one sovereign had no obligation to pay another one.

Because the colonial government failed to use force, they could not require the

Maroons to comply with their legal strictures. By 1905, the Accompong failed to

comply with colonial expectations of their community and functioned as a community

in their traditional ways. Ultimately, this is a narrative about the dominance of the

British vision of Blacks’ role in post-emancipation society. However, the historical

relationship between the state and this community combined with the pre-established

legal boundaries both undermined the British’s determined viewpoint.

This study is one of the first studies of Maroons in post-emancipation society

independent of Jamaica’s 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion. It seeks to provide a glimpse of

the political, diplomatic, and legal challenges Maroons faced in the wake of slavery’s

demise, some of which mirrored the Black community surrounding them. As a result

of examining the land challenges between the Jamaican colonial state and the Maroons

during this time period, the totalizing post-emancipation agenda of creating laborers of

Blacks was clear.

  7  

Studying the Maroons in the post-emancipation era is significant; however, the

Accompong insist that the Maroon Wars are central to their history. Scholars must

examine these communities over a longer time period. The struggles they faced for

creating and maintaining community occurred long before emancipation. This study

requires seeing continuitiets across emancipation and slavery. Diana Paton makes this

argument in No Bond But the Law as she discussed the continuity of punishment

between slavery and emancipation because emancipation was “a moment of transition

but not a binary divide.”5 Stern makes similar arguments in encouraging scholars of

Latin America to use longer time frames for studying peasant political activity so that

moments of rupture do not become the sole standard of resistant activity.6

Indeed, attempts to capture Maroon labor long before emancipation were

revealed in legislation detailing how plantation owners should arrange work contracts

with Maroons should they choose to work on their plantations. Further, the colonial

state offered individual Maroons opportunities to leave behind these communities and

live as free Blacks working on plantations, another intention the Assembly enshrined

in legislation. Combining these efforts with the colonial state ensuring that the planter

owned slave plots never devolved to the enslaved and we see harbingers of the means

the state would use to capture Black labor. These actions reinforced the legal logic of

the colonial government, both during slavery and afterwards. In order to ensure their

                                                                                                               5 Diana Paton, No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamacan State Formation, 1780 - 1870 (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2004). 6 Steve Stern, "New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion and Consciousness: Implications of the Andean Experience," in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve Stern(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).  

  8  

availability for plantation work, “negroes” were never landholders. The problems of

labor and race were always intertwined and Maroons were, unwillingly, brought into

that dialogue as well. The need for labor on plantations reached beyond the formerly

enslaved and immigrants brought into Jamaica after slavery; Maroons, as “negroes,”

were also to be incorporated into post-emancipation society as laborers. Their

resistance to this structure made them a problem for the colonial state.

At emancipation the Maroons’ status as a buffer military force dissipated

because of their race. However, in addition to the Maroons insisting on using the

treaty in their dealings with the British, the Jamaican colonial government resorted to

the same document during the post-emancipation period when it asked them to act as a

buffer military force to quell the Morant Bay Rebellion and undermined any racial

arguments they made suggesting Maroons would be part of the “negroe” population.

Hence, we also see another continuity from slavery to emancipation.

The colonial state was not the only entity that persisted with entrenched beliefs

about the role of various groups in Jamaican society both before and after

emancipation. The Maroons insisted on the treaty as a never changing document, it

would be the sole basis for community decisions, not only during slavery, but also in

emancipation. While the historical preconditions that brought about the treaty were

completely upset by emancipation, the Maroon communities insisted that the colonial

state adhere to the treaty by recognizing their autonomy, still free to labor within their

community on community-held.

  9  

Finally, the Maroons posed a new definition of freedom. For the formerly

enslaved, this meant having a piece of land and being able to operate on their own as

subsistence farmers. The Maroons added a layer to what freedom was, and this

included being landholders without the influence of the colonial state beyond that

expressed in the treaty. Once again, the Maroons created a different definition of what

it meant to be Black in post-emancipation Jamaica.

The issue of continuities is not solely about the sorts of challenges Maroons

and the colonial state witnessed from slavery to emancipation, but also in the

development of colonial states in the Caribbean as well as on the African continent.

Specifically, Jamaica, like many of the African colonial possessions, used headmen to

accomplish political goals. It is not exceptional that such a political structure was

used: the challenges of the populations were the same on both sides of the Atlantic.

Great Britain sought to conform these rural populations to the rule of law and they

knew they would face too much resistance if they inserted British people to do that

work. Hence, the rural headmen were the perfect people to undertake the task;

however, they remained accountable to the populations from which they arose. For

headman responsible to the Accompong community, this mean they lost their local

political power if they did not carry out the wishes of the Accompong community.

One vexing problem in the study of the African Diaspora was how the

Maroons fit into this framework. Kelley and Patterson articulated the challenge by

saying “[n]either the fact of blackness nor shared experiences under racism nor the

historical process of their dispersal makes for community or even a common

  10  

identity.”7 The Maroons are a very real example of this, as historically, they have not

felt any kinship with the enslaved, up to 1838, or with “negroes” after 1838. The

historical circumstances under which these communities developed created such a

schism. Further, Maroons had never imagined any kind of community except the one

they had created for themselves. They defended their homeland and were successful in

doing so, a homeland recorded in their placemaking narratives about community

creation, the narratives about the Maroon Wars.

Ultimately, for the Maroons, both during slavery and after emancipation, racial

identity and solidarity could not be assumed, a critical part of Gilroy’s critique of the

Diaspora.8 The Maroons would never accept the colonial state’s characterization of

who they were. The state, on behalf of the planters' interests, tried to impose a

monolithic vision of the 'negroe,' certainly not a vision conscribed to Jamaica or even

just the British Caribbean. This is a vision rooted in continued access to 'negroe' labor.

As seen during slavery, the Maroons, as well as the formerly enslaved, resisted racial

characterizations that limited what it was to be 'full free.' Yet, while the formerly

enslaved and the Maroons both resisted these characterizations, it was the Maroon

Wars that prevented Maroons from identifying with them and undermined a common

diasporic sensibility between the two communities. Therefore, it is to a discussion of

the Maroon Wars that this work now turns.

                                                                                                               7 Tiffany Ruby Patterson and Robin D. G. Kelley, "Unfininshed Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World," African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 18. 8 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  11  

Chapter 1: The 1655 – 1739 Maroon Wars and Lessons the Maroons Learned

Introduction

Jamaica’s Maroon communities were established in the context of a war

against the British they fought to resist slavery. Both parties ended this war when they

agreed to a peace treaty in 1739. If not much is certain, both sides would attach

different meanings to the war and the treaty that ended it. Maroons remembered

wartime lessons in a series of narratives. The Maroons concluded that they were

forever linked with the British so that both sides permanently had to observe the terms

of the treaty. However, should the British breach this agreement, the Maroons believed

they had the resources and knowledge needed to take whatever corrective action might

be necessary to fix the breach and bring the British back to the treaty. Among

reactions they considered legitimate for that purpose was warfare.

By 1841, a total of 1,583 Maroons lived in Jamaica and only 436 of them lived

in Accompong. Not only were the Maroons geographically isolated, but also the poor

roads leading to their settlements reinforced their isolation.9 The people who visited

Maroons generally went to Mooretown, the largest eastern settlement. For observers

courageous enough to venture into Maroon country, given the challenging traveling

conditions, they would have noticed a diet that included crabs and jerked hog (what is

now called jerked pork). Further, they “[r]eared cattle and poultry, cultivated corn and

                                                                                                               9 Lady Blake, "The Maroons of Jamaica," North American Review, November 1898, 564.

  12  

yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas and papaws [papaya] and mameys [a type of

apple] and avocados and all luxurious West Indian fruits . . .”10

By the turn of the century, their dwellings were described as having corrugated

tin roofs, a structure also observed in the 1930s.11 Some members of the Accompong

community still spoke Kromanti, the esoteric language of the Maroon communities.12

While the use of Kromanti was waning in Accompong, the practice of Christianity

was on the upsurge. The community experienced conflicts between the Christian

practitioners and the “traditionalists” that mirrored the challenges Alabi faced during

the eighteenth century in Richard Price’s book, Alabi’s World.13 The Maroons always

remained skeptical of outsiders as the photographer Harry Johnston thought the

Maroons to be “’insolent and disobliging, and inclined to levy blackmail on anyone

who passed through their villages and plantations and wished to photograph the

scenery.”14 These “insolent and disobliging” Maroons created and maintained their

own anecdotes about their community, unaffected by these outsiders.

These Maroon narratives created what James Scott has called a hidden

transcript, a “discourse – gesture, speech, practices – that is ordinarily excluded from

                                                                                                               10 "The Maroons of Jamaica," Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics., February 1860. 11 Phil Robinson, "The Maroons of Jamaica," Harper's Weekly, October 29 1896. Images of dwellings can be seen in The British Council Royal Geographical Society, Photos and Phantasms: Harry Johnston's Photographs of the Caribbean (London: The British Council Royal Geographical Society, 1998). This is a collection of Harry Johnston’s photos taken in the Caribbean overall during the 1930s. 12 Archibald Cooper, "Discusses an Offer to Teach Cooper Kromanti, 1939," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. For a greater sense of what the Kromanti language is, see generally Kenneth Bilby, True-Born Maroons (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2006). 13 Archibald Cooper, "Describes Burning Down the Old-Timers House in Old Town, 1939," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica; Richard Price, Alabi's World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 127. 14 Society, 55.

  13  

the public transcript of subordinates by the exercise of power. The practice of

domination, then, creates the hidden transcript.”15 Scott also argues that the “hidden

transcript has no reality as pure thought; it exists only to the extent it is practiced,

articulated, enacted, and disseminated . . .”16 This chapter discusses both the context in

which these narratives arose and the conclusions Maroons drew from them, the

content of their hidden transcript. The British sources discuss that context, but while

revealing much about their struggles in this war, they say little about how the Maroons

fought the war.

The format of the Accompong oral histories is historical vignettes connected to

particular places in the community that both reveal the role of ancestors in the

community and clarify the role of community members. These vignettes are called

placemaking narratives.17 Maroons relate their oral history with placemaking

narratives about the War and these histories best capture their self-perception. Dates,

in traditional Western histories, function as bookmarks to ground historical analysis.

For the Maroons, “temporal considerations . . . are accorded secondary importance.”18

Instead, at each place, one learns what the event was; what the ancestors endured in

dealing with that particular event; and what that event means for the current

community members.19 The narratives often contain spectacular stories demonstrating

                                                                                                               15 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 27. 16 Ibid., 119.  17 Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996). 18 Ibid., 31. 19 Ibid., 3 - 8; Jean Besson, "Sacred Sites, Shifting Histories: Narratives of Belonging, Land and Globalisation in the Cockpit Country, Jamaica," in Caribbean Narratives of Belonging: Fields of

  14  

superhuman feats. Ultimately, in the context of post-emancipation land struggles

between the Accompong Maroons and the Jamaican government, the placemaking

narratives provided context for why Maroons made particular land claims, claims that

date back to when the treaty was signed. The narratives also revealed what were

Maroon understandings of what they agreed to in 1739.

The Accompong Maroons’ placemaking narratives also reveal the use of what

Maroons call “Science;” herbal knowledge and intercession with the ancestors to

ensure that any evil spirits that could compromise the ability of the community to

survive are defeated. Placemaking narratives are central to the ways the community

memorialized the war and provides data about Maroon military victories against the

British.

I spent a total of one month between 2007 and 2008 in Accompong speaking

with Maroons who knew these placemaking narratives that drove their interpretation

of post-emancipation events. Nothing can be accomplished in the community without

first securing the approval of the Colonel. Indeed, the second time I was in

Accompong, researchers seeking to do DNA testing of the Accompong with the hopes

of determining their ethnic origins failed before they began because they did not

obtain the Colonel's approval and so the community refused to cooperate.

My first interviews were conducted with the Colonel and the community

historian, Melville Curri. Prior to Melville Curri, Man O' Rowe, a well-known

historian referred to by both Kenneth Bilby and Werner Zips, had this role, but he died                                                                                                                Relations, Sites of Identity, ed. Jean Besson and Karen Fog Olwig(Oxford: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2005).  

  15  

two years before I started doing my research.20 The other individuals I interviewed

included the Scientist, the herbalist (the only woman), tour guides, the Abeng player, a

former Colonel, and other members of the Colonel’s council. All of these individuals

were part of Accompong’s political leadership.

Why the community elects a given individual depends on the challenges the

community faces. Regardless of what is happening at any given point in time, the

Colonel should have sufficient knowledge of Maroon history so that they do not take

actions that would be contrary to the community's interests. The Colonel does not

serve his term in isolation; he has a Council of his choosing who advises him.21 As I

continued to ask for other people to interview, the recommendations would always

return to these names, the people who were most closely associated with the Colonel,

and most likely on his Council.

Each interview lasted between one and two hours. My questions were aimed at

determining why they considered themselves to be Maroons, what were the

boundaries of Accompong, and specific questions about the land conflicts discussed in

this work. I completed each interview by asking about the January 6 ceremonies

commemorating Cudjoe. These questions provided context about the value the

Accompong attached to their land and what were the boundaries of that land, both as

they thought about it historically and what that meant in the present period. Finally,

discussions about January 6 reinforced who were the ancestors most significant to the

                                                                                                               20 Bilby; Werner Zips, Nanny's Asafo Warriors: The Jamaican Maroons' African Experience (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2011). 21 Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008).

  16  

community. These interviews provided me with a sense of what was the Maroon

archive, and reflected how they created it: oral histories told from generation to

generation. Regardless of their oral transmission, the same sorts of narratives appear

across time. Archibald Cooper, a graduate student who conducted research among the

Accompong during the 1930s, recorded the same narratives I encountered. Further,

current scholars of the Accompong also recorded the same narratives, some collected

as far back as the 1970s.22

In contradistinction to this oral archive, the British presented two interrelated

blind spots in narrating the Maroon Wars. First, they did not understand how and why

the Maroons had such military successes against them; and second, they held a

fundamental disbelief that Maroons could succeed against the military only using

guerilla warfare tactics. Thus, Maroon oral histories generally, and placemaking

narratives in particular, fill in what is not understood by those whose writings

constructed the archive. Oral history thus offers a contrasting set of beliefs about what

is and is not possible. If those who construct the archive effectively say, “we do not

understand because we do not see what happened as doable in the first place,” one is

offered, by the archive, mostly data about why the event was impossible, unthinkable,

as opposed to how it was possible.23 Maroon narratives challenge not only that it was

possible, but also reveal how it was accomplished from the community’s perspective.                                                                                                                22 See generally Besson; Bilby; Zips. 23 Trouillot links unthinkability with hegemony in explaining silences concerning the Haitian Revolution: “white hegemony is natural and taken for granted; any alternative is still in the domain of the unthinkable.” Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 93. British military hegemony in the context of the Maroon Wars was also assumed and justified, if not in blatantly racial terms, cultural terms. Hence any military successes Maroons could experience were dismissed.

  17  

British archival preconceptions provide limited perspective on how Maroons saw

themselves winning against a foe that had outgunned and generally out resourced

them. Additionally, they offer perspective on how these perceptions continued in the

post-emancipation period. Ultimately, oral narratives and the placemaking narratives

within them helped create an intersecting archive through which one can better access

Maroon history.

British Narratives about the War  

The First Maroon War is central to understanding how the Maroons built their

community and the lessons they learned. Jamaica’s governor during the Maroon Wars,

Robert Hunter, kept records of Jamaica’s military needs and the challenges faced as

they tried to fight both the Spanish and the Maroons. A few of Jamaica’s prominent

planters also wrote their versions of the wartime encounters with the Maroons, which

also provide information about the challenges the British experienced.24 Yet, beyond

descriptions of how Maroons ambushed British troops, we learn surprisingly little

about the Maroons. As the British narratives are reviewed, it becomes apparent that a

                                                                                                               24 Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, from Their Origin to the Establishment of Their Chief Tribe at Sierra Leone, Including the Expedition to Cuba for the Purpose of Procuring Spanish Chasseurs and the State of the Island of Jamaica for the Last Ten Years with a Succinct History of the Island Previous to That Period, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: Cass, 1803; reprint, 1968); Bryan Edwards, The Proceedings of the Governor and Assembly of Jamaica, in Regard to the Maroon Negroes: Published by Order of the Assembly. (Connecticut: Negro Universities Press, 1796; reprint, 1970); Edward Long, The History of Jamaica, or General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of That Island: With Reflections on Its Situations, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws and Government., 3 vols., vol. 2 (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1774; reprint, 1970); Edward Long, The History of Jamaica, or General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of That Island: With Reflections on Its Situations, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws and Government., 3 vols., vol. 1 (New York: Arno Press, 1774; reprint, 1972).

  18  

major unknown element regards how the Maroons fought; the British found

themselves engaged in guerilla warfare.

Governor Hunter conveyed the difficulties he faced as he tried to prosecute

two wars and ensure that there was enough money to cover Jamaica’s expenses:

“From my Speech Your Grace will please to Observe the State & Condition of this

Country, the Drought still Continues to that Degree the like was never known her; and

there is neither Trade nor money stirring; For short the Island is in a Deplorable

Condition . . .”25 He also included in the record reports from the soldiers describing

the sorts of ambushes they encountered. While trying to reach the Maroon Town, the

soldiers had to cross fords as well as mount each others’ backs to climb up high rocks

and pass their baggage and ammunition to each other. “Codg’d above, on either side

the River [the rebels] may destroy any number sent against them whilst they are

crossing these Fords, at most without being seen, which was the case of seeing the

Enemy method was to fire, then lie down, & load again, & so [they are] constantly

under cover . . .”26

The soldiers writing this entry provided us with a partial description of the

Maroons’ ambush technique in that they remained low to the ground, not visible to

their enemies, while they reloaded their arms and continued. Other soldiers reported

that the rebels “usually Insconce themselves within places of natural Defence, as

                                                                                                               25 Robert Hunter, "Letter to the Duke of Newcastle Park, the Secretary of State, April 24, 1727," 1B/5/18/1, Spanish Town, Jamaica.  26 James Fountain Steven Cornwallis, Jon Holy, "Letter to Governor Robert Hunter Concerning Progress During the Maroon Wars, December 15, 1731," 1B/5/18/1, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  19  

Trees, Rocks & of the latter of which there are abundance in the said Town . . .”27

Allen, one of the soldiers, and his colleagues described this technique as one of the

disadvantages that they faced when engaged in battle with them.

Planters such as Edward Long described the ambushes as guerilla warfare or

“bush fighting;” 28 however, these labels revealed little of how Maroons perceived

themselves and the claims they made about the Maroon Wars. How did the Maroons’

ambushes help them win the war? The answer to that question provides data about

how the Maroons built their community and how they survived. The question itself,

however, requires a departure from the written archival data about the Maroon Wars.

The oral narratives cannot be read for their “truth” value, but instead for what we learn

about the Accompong during the war and how they used their battle techniques to fuel

their political fight against the colonial government to keep their land and community

intact in post-emancipation Jamaica. The oral narratives reflect what the Accompong

believe about themselves.

Ambuscade, for example, did not mean the same thing to both sides, aside

from hiding and attacking the enemy. The British defined it as “[a] military disposition

consisting of troops concealed in a wood or other place, in order to surprise and fall

unexpectedly upon an enemy. The ambush is the entire strategic arrangement or trap;

but sometimes the postures, sometimes the place, sometimes the troops, are the

                                                                                                               27 Christopher Allen and others, "Report to Military Officials, February 23, 1732," 1B/5/18/1, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 28 Long, 344.  

  20  

prominent part of the idea.”29 However, for the Maroons, ambush was not merely a

strategy but included camouflage; something warriors wore by completely covering

themselves in foliage to remain unseen by the enemy. Ambush was not merely hiding,

but was being part of the foliage, including crawling inside tree trunks from which

they could fight.30

The British comprehended the extent to which Maroons were formidable foes,

in part, because of their reliance on ambush. The Maroons’ seeming ability to

disappear in plain sight reflected their ability to defeat any enemy coming their way.

They did not have the same level of material well-being (i.e. battle clothes) as the

British, but these accounts reflected that these comforts made the British vulnerable

while fighting because their supplies made noise and their uniforms did not blend into

the environment. For the Maroons, material comfort was not necessary to gain the

upper hand with an outsider; instead becoming part of your surroundings both built

and preserved the community because they could eliminate the enemy and then took

his personal effects which included weapons and other items of value to the

community.31

These records provided the wartime data that shed some light on how the

Maroons fought their British nemeses. However, given the exigencies the soldiers

                                                                                                               29 http://www.oed.com, s.v. "Ambush, N." 30 Michelle Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). 31 Ultimately, the Accompong understand that if any significant military threat were posed to the Accompong community, they would rely on such techniques to defend themselves individually, and the community overall. The importance of ambush is seen to this very day. The Janaury 6 festivities, commemorating Cudjoe’s birthday, features a parade from Old Town (where the first-timers are buried) and Peace Cave (the site the Accompong attribute to the treaty signing)  to  the  Kindah  Tree  (a  common  meeting  place  in  Accompong)  where  community  members  dress  in  ambush.  

  21  

faced in trying to emerge from these battles with their lives, the records do not provide

a full picture of how the Maroons fought this war.

Maroon Fighting Strategies

Using the placemaking process in the historical study of subaltern peoples

allows for more inclusive histories, providing the perspective of the subject peoples;

and the narratives expand and challenge the power of the archive. Michel-Rolph

Trouillot argues that power affects the archive by creating historical silences in four

ways: “the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact

assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of

narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the

final instance).”32

Ultimately, placemaking narratives create an intersecting archive that place

Maroon interpretations of events as a central element of historical analysis (indeed, the

Maroons discuss events that are grappled with in the British narratives). The narratives

provided details of events that are not present in the written archives because the

Maroons did not create those archives in the first place; they were, in the traditional

historical sense, deprived of the opportunity to create the archive and did not have the

power to define themselves through it.

A placemaking narrative that reflects the ability of Maroons to defeat any

enemy is one involving Peace Cave, an historic site in Accompong. The Maroons

thought the British formidable because they had guns. They did not have access to

                                                                                                               32 Trouillot, 26. Emphasis is Trouillot’s.  

  22  

ammunition to the same extent although they acquired a substantial cache by stealing

it from felled soldiers and on plantation raids.33 Today, on the route to Peace Cave,

one encounters a placard stating “this is the place where the British were defeated,”

framing the importance of the narrative about Peace Cave.34 The oral history begins

with Cudjoe, the head of the Maroon communities during the Maroon Wars, waiting in

the back of the cave. His lieutenants watched for British soldiers outside the cave. The

watchmen (related as being men and not women) sounded the abeng, a horn made

from a cow’s tusk, to notify Cudjoe that the British were coming and how many

soldiers he could expect. The narratives do not state why the British soldiers went into

the cave in the first place. However, Cudjoe had placed a rock in the cave and every

time a soldier stepped on the rock, it made a noise, so Cudjoe knew how many soldiers

were there. When all had arrived, he and some other Maroons shot all but one. This

was a critical ambush (in the British sense of the word) in the Maroon Wars. The one

person who was left alive was given the ears of the dead soldiers to take back to his

military command as a reminder of the power of their enemy.35

Ultimately, the narrative of Peace Cave demonstrated that community

members could withstand challenges they may face from outsiders. Further, the

Accompong understood the strategic ways by which outsiders are repelled. In this

                                                                                                               33 Ebenezer Lambe, "A Journal of the Proceedings of the Parties Commanded by Edward Croswell and Ebenezer Lambe, February 27 - March 12, 1732," 1B/5/18/1, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 34 Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008). 35 The story of Peace Cave was retold in the following interviews: Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008); Michelle Thompson, "Interview with George Huggins, the Accompong Maroon Goombay Drum Maker," (2008).

  23  

narrative ambush was critical to defeating outsiders. Hence, these skills cannot be lost;

without them, the community would be vulnerable.

Science  

Science can be defined as communication with ancestors to intercede with

harmful acts either done to an individual or the community-at-large.36 This

communication with ancestors could involve using herbs, prayers, or dances. Its use is

far broader than the military realm; however, it too was used during the Maroon Wars.

British sources do not refer to Science at all, but instead to obeah.37 Ironically,

obeah lacks specific definition in these sources as it is generally referred to as

“witchcraft”, a “charm”, a “prejudice”, or a “superstition.”38 While these function as

descriptions of what the British thought they were seeing, it does not provide much in

the way of substantive description of what was the practice of obeah. Whatever it was,

the British found it so terrifying that its practice was outlawed in Jamaica.39

Meanwhile, Maroons vigorously denied that they practiced obeah, a denial that

persists to this day.40 The critical difference in the practice of Science, which Maroons

engaged in, and obeah, lies in intent. Maroons viewed Science as a protective force, in

                                                                                                               36 Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 37 For example, see Edwards, xxix. Dallas, 92 - 3. 38 The reference to witchcraft can be found in Edwards, xxix. The other references are in Dallas, 92 - 3. 39 The legislation concerning obeah cited here was passed after emancipation. However, the frequency of the legislation both before and after crown colony government suggests the level of fear attached to the practice of obeah. "An Act to Explain the Fourth Victoria, Chapter Forty-Two, and the Nineteenth Victoria, Chapter Thirty, and for the More Effectual Punishment of Obeah and Mylaism.," in Law of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1857); "The Obeah and Myalism Acts Amendment Law, 1892," in Law of Jamaica (Jamaica 1892); "The Obeah and Myalism Acts Further Amendment Law, 1893," in Law of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1893); "The Obeah Law, 1898," in Law of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1898). 40 Bilby, 293; Bev Carey, The Maroon Story: The Authentic and Original History of the Maroons in the History of Jamaica. 1490 - 1880 (St. Andrew: Agouti Press, 1997; reprint, 2001).  Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008).

  24  

opposition to obeah, which is seen as an evil force.41 For example, one used Science to

protect individuals or the community from the harmful acts of duppies (ghosts).42

Sometimes, Science was used to protect individuals from evil spirits. Also, for

Maroons, the distinction between Science and obeah lay in who was a Maroon and

who was an outsider. Indeed, it was outsiders who could compromise a Maroon

through obeah, a spritual practice that requires a “bad mind” or criminal intent.43

Science was practiced by someone who was from the community, who would not use

it for ill purpose, and who could be trusted in the Maroon community.

Some of the greatest Scientists in Maroon oral histories were the first-time

Maroons, the ancestors who were called upon when using Science because they were

the people who both developed Maroon wartime strategy and won the war for the

Maroon communities. Grandy Nanny is credited as the founding member of the

Windward (Eastern) group of the Maroon communities; however, she is also regarded

warmly by the Accompong Maroons. Cudjoe is said to be Nanny’s brother and the

                                                                                                               41 During the Accompong Tour, a visitor is brought to the Seal Grounds, which are to provide protection against evil spirits. It is also a place where one can receive spiritual guidance against evil things. This spiritual guidance is for the good of the community and therefore not characterized as obeah. Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008). A community Scientist, James Chambers, discusses Science as used by the first-timers, specifically arguing that they used it for the benefit of the community. , by Michelle Thompson, June 18, Interview with James Chambers, Accompong Scientist. Rupee Reid, the community abeng player argues that Science is used to fix problems in the community and not to bring harm. Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 42 Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 43 Bilby, 293. Bilby discusses the distinction between Maroon and outsider and how this is connected with using obeah or Science. However, Maroons are adamant about people who practice obeah having “bad mind” or ill intent. Ironically, in the Cooper Manuscript papers, this very conflation of terms, Science and obeah is present in Cooper’s summaries of the material, although the people he interviews make a clear distinction between the two and are actually afraid to be associated with obeah. Archibald Cooper, "Ba Will on Spiritual Power 1938," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica; Archibald Cooper, "Obeah and Foster, 1938," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008).  

  25  

head of the Western Maroons referred to in both British and Accompong sources.44

Accompong, one of Nanny’s and Cudjoe’s brothers, became the leader of the

Accompong Maroons. These Scientists are thought to protect the community and are

called upon whenever the community meets to decide something of consequence.45

Given the first-timers’ wartime role, community members calling upon them

are required to pay their respects. One of my interviews with a Scientist, James

Chambers, required that he pour rum libations to the first-timers described above.

Visitors to Peace Cave must bring rum that is also used for libations and left for the

ancestors as well. This was the case not only in recent visits with the Accompong, but

also in the 1930s, when anthropologist Archibald Cooper lived among the

Accompong. The events Cooper witnessed included calling upon the ancestors in

funerals and the digging of graves. At these events, the community wanted to ensure

that the first-timers were not angry with the community so that they could continue to

receive protection.46 Protecting others and the community, through the use of Science,

is one of those events that required the ancestors’ guidance and protection. Hence,

communication with them was required before performing any Scientific acts.

Maroons believe that Science, as a tool to make everything right in the

community, was often deployed during the Maroon Wars and was not reflected in the

British narratives about the war. One story the Accompong repeat about the Windward

                                                                                                               44 , by Thompson; Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008). 45 Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Constantia Foster," (2008). 46Archibald Cooper, "Field Notes on Accompong Maroon Burials, 1938," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica.

  26  

groups of Maroons, is a tale about Grandy Nanny. During the war, when Nanny was in

battle, the British aimed many bullets at the Maroons. It is said that Nanny actually

caught the bullets in her back side and then fired them back at her British foes. The

Accompong argue that this was one of the events that contributed to British losses and

eventually convinced them to treat with the Maroons as they were both indefatigable

and undefeatable.47 Maroons believed that Science was a definitive factor in British

military defeats during the war. Given these narratives, it is not inconceivable that

when threatened, Maroons sought to use Science during land conflicts in the post-

emancipation period. The Maroons’ account of Nanny’s battlefield defenses is one

example of how Scientific techniques are employed for the good of the Maroon

community. This chapter now examines two narratives, one British and one Maroon

where Maroons conclude that the community founders used Science during the war.

The British often characterized the Maroons as thoughtless in their selection of

war victims. Here is one of many general accounts stating that Maroons killed without

concern for their victim: “[m]urder attended all their successes: not only men but

women and children were sacrificed to their fury, and even people of their own colour,

if unconnected with them.”48 Bryan Edwards also uses such generalities to discuss

alleged carnage committed by Maroons.49 These ways of describing Maroon atrocities

are not unlike the way atrocities connected to the Haitian Revolution were described.

                                                                                                               47 My mother, as a child, spent a limited amount of time with relatives who lived in Mooretown, the largest Maroon group on the Eastern part of Jamaica and the community associated with Grandy Nanny. This narrative is the only one that she remembers and related to me as a young person. Bilby, 204 - 215. 48 Dallas, 34. 49 See generally Edwards.  

  27  

As it concerned Haiti, Dubois argues that “[a]s narratives move a bit further from the

first-hand accounts and become chronicles and simultaneously charters for interpreting

and responding to the insurrection, they tend to repeat representations that focused on

atrocities.”50 In this case, these accounts did not even repeat actual events, but instead

general characterizations of the violence.

Given these descriptions of violence by the Maroons, Science contextualizes

the violence experienced during the Maroon Wars. The lack of detail on the murders

committed by Maroons raises the question of whether the details were too horrible to

describe. However, one graphic incident described by Bryan Edwards, a plantation

owner, is unusual in its detail. A British soldier who was a leader among the troops

was killed in battle. When his body was found, he was beheaded. Eventually, his head

was found in his bowels.51 But given the environment in eighteenth-century Jamaica,

where disease, malnutrition, overwork, violence, death, and warfare were a regular

part of the landscape; it would be difficult to consider most circumstances connected

with Maroon or British deaths to be horrific or unusual.52 Indeed, masters regularly

dismembered slaves’ bodies as a warning to living slaves. However, to make sense of

this soldier’s death, one should look to Maroon oral history.

The event described in the following Maroon narrative is thought to have

occurred sometime after the Accompong communities were formed. It both sheds light

                                                                                                               50 Laurent Dubois, "Avenging America: The Politics of Violence in the Haitian Revolution," in The World of the Haitian Revolution, ed. David Patrick Geggus and Norman Fiering(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 51 Edwards. 52 Vincent Brown, The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 4.  

  28  

on a belief system that justifies beheading an enemy and demonstrates how Science

was used to solve the community’s problems. A problem arose when one of

Accompong’s brothers, Quankee, was killing the community’s male children. The

leaders, namely Accompong and Cudjoe, decided to solve the problem by beheading

Quankee. However, once they beheaded him, Quankee reattached his head to his body

and continued killing. Accompong and Cudjoe decided that using Science in

combination with beheading would preserve the community. After beheading

Quankee, they applied a concoction mixed with okra and other ingredients to his

headless body so that he could not reattach his head and continue living. The

community was saved from the threat that Quankee posed.53

This narrative reflects the fact that the Accompong were not troubled about

beheading their enemies: there is little doubt that this soldier met his demise at the

hands of the Maroons. However, it does not make sense to conclude that Maroons

regularly beheaded their enemies either: neither the British nor the Maroons provide

enough evidence to justify that beheading was a regular practice. Nevertheless, it does

suggest that it was perceived as a means of permanently incapacitating an enemy, even

one within the community, a Maroon. The incident with the soldier suggested that this

military leader had to be beheaded in order to ensure that he would not continue to

threaten the Maroon community. Perhaps for enemies who were not versed in the use

of Science, putting the head with the bowels would be protection enough. Ultimately,

this battle practice is something used beyond self-defense: it was used to rid the

                                                                                                               53 , by Thompson.

  29  

community of grave harm that it faced. However, as the definition of Science implies,

the practice was consistent with the correction of problems within the community as

well.

The Treaty  

One event connected to the war that included much description by both the

Maroons and the British is the signing of the treaty in 1739. The treaty is the most

important document to the Accompong community not only because it ended a long

and contentious war, but because it also was a legal recognition of the Maroon

community. Hence, the circumstances under which it was won were of critical

importance to the Maroons. This included the specifics under which the treaty was

agreed upon by the Maroons and the British. These details included both the place

where the treaty was concluded and the process by which the treaty was agreed to.

The details in the published treaty included the often quoted permanent peace

between the Maroons and the British; that the Maroons would hunt down and return

runaway slaves; and that they would receive a land grant of 1500 acres for the

community: “[t]hat they shall enjoy and possess for themselves and posterity for ever,

all the lands situate and lying between Trelawney town and the cockpits, to the amount

of fifteen hundred acres, bearing north-west from the said Trelawney Town . . .”54 The

                                                                                                               54 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739), 176 - 7. This argument is signed with the Trelawney Maroons. The Accompong, as argued later, see themselves as part of this community and therefore beneficiaries of the treaty. However, the British passed legislation in 1758 incorporating the Accompong into the original treaties. "An Act to Ascertain and Establish the Boundaries of Trelawney Town, and to Settle and Allot

  30  

boundaries of the Maroon communities, although written in the treaty, are a source of

controversy for the Accompong. In describing the boundaries, the Accompong believe

that they were from seaport to seaport, meaning from Black River in the Southwest

corner of Jamaica to Montego Bay (sometimes the original boundaries were related as

being as far east as Falmouth, see figure 1.), an area ten times larger than the 1500

acres described in the treaty.55 However, because Cudjoe did not read, the British

tricked him and significantly narrowed the boundaries.56 Those boundaries are often

now described as including the entire area of the Cockpit Mountains.57 The

Accompong started with a broader understanding of their boundaries and recently

decided to narrow the contested geographic area because they could not populate or

win back the original boundaries.58 Placemaking narratives provide the historical

context for the claims they made for a greater set of Maroon lands in the post-

emancipation period (1842 – 1905). In 1739 the Accompong understood their

boundaries as being much broader than memorialized in the treaty. This vignette

                                                                                                               One Thousand Acres of Land for Accompong's Town, and to Ascertain the Boundaries Thereof.," in The Laws of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1758). 55 Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Constantia Foster," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). This argument is also made by Jean Besson based on her interviews with the Accompong. Besson, 23; ibid. Finally, Bev Carey makes this argument stating “Another of the significant issues which continue to upset the Accompong Town Maroons is the area of  land allocated  to  Cudjoe and his people. This is given as 1,500 acres in the published treaty . . . the area of land  referred  to  in that draft was 15,000 acres . . . The Accompong Maroons therefore say that Britain owes them for that acreage which was stolen by perfidy and which neither they nor their ancestors have ever enjoyed for over two hundred and sixty years.” Carey, 337 - 8. 56 Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 57 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008); ibid.; Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 58 Thompson, "Interview with Constantia Foster," (2008).

  31  

reflects how place served as a way of recording Accompong Maroon history and

reflected the importance of the first Maroon War, the treaty, land, and the interactions

of community members with outsiders.

Figure 1: General map of Jamaica. The Cockpit Mountains are generally the province of the Accompong. Black River is significantly to the Southwest of the Cockpits and Montego Bay to the Northwest. Falmouth is between Montego Bay and Clark's Town to the north.59

The treaty also provided that a government appointed superintendent would

live among the community to help facilitate the relationship between the British and

the Maroon societies. Finally, the Maroons would fight enemies of Jamaica, as they

would form a permanent militia in service of the Crown.60

Other terms of the treaty were not factored into Maroon community lore. The

treaty limited the types of agriculture they could grow, for example, no sugar cane. It

                                                                                                               59 "Map of Jamaica", World Books.com http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/caribb/jm.htm (accessed 22 December 2009). 60 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).  

  32  

is obvious why this would be the case: the British government could not tolerate

internal competition for sugar because it proved so lucrative on international markets.

The Maroons were also responsible for punishing their own people, unless the

Maroons decided to use the death penalty as a method of punishment. This term, on its

face, does not seem significant; however, a breach of this condition on a plantation not

far away from the Trelawney Maroon community was the catalyst behind the Second

Maroon Wars.

Both the British and the Maroons also disagreed about where the treaty was

signed. Both versions point to places that have enormous importance to the Maroon

community. The British believed that the treaty was signed at Old Town, a locale that

the Accompong see as significant albeit not for the same reasons. First of all, Old

Town was the original location of Accompong; Accompong did not start where it is

today and outsiders do not know why the community moved.

The Accompong Maroons also saw Old Town as significant because it was

sacred ground. Accompong himself is buried there and the community marked his

grave with a stone slab.61 Further, after Accompong’s death, placemaking narratives

state that the four ancestors’ spirits, Accompong, Nanny, Quaco, and Cuffee spent

their time in four large cottonwood trees located there.62 Into the 1930s community

members practiced Science at Old Town because the ancestors’ ghosts were said to                                                                                                                61 Interviewed by author, Interview, by Garfield Rowe, June 16. Accompong, Jamaica. I saw his grave site with an Accompong tour guide, Bill Peddie. 62Quaco is a reference to one of the military and political leaders for the Maroons; however, he is rarely mentioned in Accompong oral histories. Cuffee is also referred to as Quankee and was the founder who is credited with killing the first–born boys in Accompong. Archibald Cooper, "Pacific Northwest Anthropological Society Annual Meeting, April, 1950," Conference Paper, Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008).

  33  

regularly appear there. A Christian community member burned down the ritual house

at Old Town to discontinue such practices within the community.63

Nevertheless, to the present day, on January 6, the day the Accompong set

aside to honor Accompong’s birthday, non-Maroons are prohibited from visiting Old

Town for fear that the ancestors would disapprove of outsiders participating in the

closed festivities at Old Town and, as a result, disrupt the celebration. However, in

spite of its great significance to the Accompong Maroons, as the original site of

Accompong, it is not credited as the place where the treaty was signed.

If we take the British account seriously, signing a treaty at Old Town would

reflect the diminishing military influence the British had at the end of the war. Yet, the

treaty was also signed at one of the least threatening places in Maroon territory, the

town center. Regardless of the specific location, signing the treaty in Accompong

territory reflects the treaty’s founding importance.

The Maroons remember that Peace Cave was where they finalized the treaty

with the British; a placard there states “[a]t this place was signed the peace treaty of

1739 between the British and the Maroons after the defeat of the British forces in

1739.”64 This difference in the locale of treaty signing suggests that the Maroons were

larger actors in the conclusion of the war than British sources commend. We know

that both sides were at the end of their military strength at the time the treaty was

proposed and negotiated. The British did not know that the Maroons were militarily

                                                                                                               63 Cooper, "Pacific Northwest Anthropological Society Annual Meeting, April, 1950," Conference Paper, Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. 64 Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008).

  34  

weakened by the end of the war. The Maroons took advantage of this and the British

had to cede control over the location where the treaty was signed in order to secure the

peace. No matter which version is credible, the British signed the treaty in a place

where the Maroons were in control: not in an office in Spanish Town, Jamaica’s

capital at the time. Ultimately, this discrepancy about the locale of treaty signing,

contrary to what was explicitly written in the British record, reflected how little

control the British exerted over the situation. According to Maroon accounts, the

British were brought back to the place where they took a military defeat. This

underscores that the Maroons understood their strength as a community, even at the

worst of military junctures.

Another difference between the British and Maroon narratives is the issue of

whether Cudjoe prostrated himself to the British after signing the treaty. Robert

Dallas, a Jamaican merchant, describes the scene of signing the treaty this way:

“Colonel Guthrie advanced to him holding out his hand, which Cudjoe seized and

kissed. He then threw himself on the ground, embracing Guthrie’s legs, kissing his

feet, and asking his pardon . . . The rest of the Maroons, following the example of their

chief, prostrated themselves and expressed the most unbounded joy at the sincerity

shown on the side of the White people.”65 Maroons challenge this depiction as

unlikely.66 Additionally, it is challenged, in part, because it did not reflect the manner

in which Maroons solemnize agreements.

                                                                                                               65 Dallas, 56. 66 Carey, 331.

  35  

The British refer generally to the solemnities followed when signing the treaty.

No specifics are offered about this process at all in the British sources, aside from the

reporting of Cudjoe’s prostrating himself to Colonel Guthrie. Contrary to the British

accounts, the Accompong oral narratives were rich in details about how the treaty was

solemnized. They state that after the war ended, the British and the Maroons entered

into a blood treaty. This required drawing blood from a British person and a Maroon,

letting the blood drip into a calabash, adding over proof rum, mixing this together and

drinking the mixture. There would no longer be war between the two because they

were “a united brother and friend.”67 The treaty was therefore signed in blood, forming

a blood covenant.68 This method of solemnizing agreements had a deep connection

with Ghanaian traditions about creating bonds with others and ending hostile

relationships. As a result, for the Accompong, the treaty represents an agreement

between the British and themselves that is perpetual: regardless of the change of

historical circumstances, the agreement must be maintained over time.

Because the British and the Maroons participated in a ceremony that would

forever connect the Accompong to the British with unchanging terms, ultimately, the

level of betrayal for the Accompong surrounding their actual boundaries was great.

                                                                                                               67 Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 68 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). Kenneth Bilby, "Swearing by the Past, Swearing to the Future: Sacred Oaths, Alliances, and Treaties among the Guianese and Jamaican Maroons," Ethnohistory 44, no. 4 (1997). Also see Barbara Kopytoff, "Colonial Treaty as Sacred Charter of the Jamaican Maroons," Ethnohistory 26, no. 1 (1979). Kopytoff argues that the treaty between the British and the Maroons is a sacred document. Bilby’s article argues that oath taking ceremonies resembling Maroon practices described by them at the signing of the treaty were used in Akan statecraft throughout the history of Akan empire building. Ultimately, “Jamaican and Aluku oaths represent syncretic blends of specific features whose origins lie in several different parts of the African continent seems certain.” Bilby: 677. It is this ceremony that gives the Maroon lands its sacred nature.  

  36  

The treaty contributes to another site through which Accompong history is told, not

only because it was signed at Peace Cave, but also because of disagreement about the

actual boundaries, a disagreement that resurfaces in the post-emancipation era

disputes.

A provocative question is how can the Accompong’s understandings about

their borders be absent in the treaty? It would seem that the treaty would suffice as

prima facie evidence of the intent of both sides. However, given the Maroon stance in

the post-emancipation period about their lands, this is not the case. Ultimately, this

contrary understanding about the terms of treaty-held land reflected the greater power

of the British in the mechanism of memorializing the intent of both parties. While the

process of memorializing the treaty reflected Maroon understandings of how to build a

perpetual peace with one’s enemies, the written contract between two sovereign

powers, a treaty, is the mechanism used by the British that requires great literacy to

understand its very terms. Maroons explicitly acknowledged the fact that Cudjoe could

not read: “Because Cudjoe wasn’t a reader. And when dat peace treaty was sign, being

as he couldn’t read, they just cut, dey went under dere skin, and sign de treaty and dey

both drink out of the same calabash with white proof rum and sign it.”69

Yet, there are two other explanations of why such varying explanations of the

treaty terms. It is possible that the Maroons and the “British” negotiated the terms

orally and that “these consultations presumably formed the real decision basis for the

                                                                                                               69 Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008).

  37  

Maroons.”70 The British simply used these negotiations to form the conceptual basis of

what would become the final written document. The British may also have put an

overly positive spin on the treaty terms during these oral negotiations so that there was

agreement, but the written terms would be much less generous than discussed.71

The Accompong imply that using the Maroon method of sealing an agreement,

mixing the blood of both sides with rum and drinking it from a calabash, was done by

the Maroons after the war because they were unable to read. Given this discrepancy in

power, it seems amazing that more disagreement about the terms of the treaty does not

exist. The only treaty term that the British and the Maroons regularly debate is that

over the amount of land, not any other terms (with the exception of who would punish

Maroons who committed crimes outside their villages; the issue that triggered the

Second Maroon War). Ultimately, the version that the British presented to Cudjoe for

his signature, according to the Accompong, seriously misstated the amount of land;

however, it was a problem that could not have been remedied given the inability of the

Maroons at that time to read. While the Maroons could use their military power to

require the British to negotiate and finalize the treaty on their land, the British could,

according to Maroon lore, use their power to misstate the agreement about the amount

of land the Maroons were entitled to in the treaty.

Nevertheless, today’s Maroons take a pragmatic stance about the boundaries of

their lands. In an interview with Colonel Peddie and the Accompong historian

Melville Courri, both men argued that the boundaries go “from Alexander Stanhope in                                                                                                                70 Zips, 194. 71 Ibid.

  38  

the East to Alexander Stanhope in the West.”72 On a period map, the borders of

Accompong abut lands owned by Alexander Stanhope. A former Colonel, Harris

Cawley, points to lands owned by Alexander Payton as well.73 The Accompong’s

willingness to accept the boundaries of their land in the current period does not mean

that they did not challenge these boundaries in the past so that the narrative about the

borders became crucial to understanding Maroon stances towards land in the period

following slavery.

Figure 2: 1757 Map of Accompong. The Southwest border of Accompong indicates that it was owned by a Mr. Stanhope.74

Conclusion  

What is not clear in the British sources is that Maroons felt that they were well

equipped to go to war with any foe at any time to defend both their community and the

land. Not only were they well equipped to fight, they were certain they would defeat

                                                                                                               72 Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008). 73 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). 74 William Wotla, "Accompong Town," (Kingston, Jamaica: National Library of Jamaica, 1757).  

  39  

their enemy. Part of their confidence stemmed from their fighting strategies, one

example being the use of ambush. Another reason for such Maroon confidence was

the use of Science. Maroons believed Science had the ability to annihilate an enemy

with the purpose of bringing good things to the community at large and is what

Maroons believed helped defeat the British.

The British and the Maroons both have conflicting memories about where and

how the treaty between them was concluded. The British described a place called Old

Town as the place where the treaty was solemnized, a significant location because it

was the foundational place of the Accompong community. However, the Maroons

recall the place as Peace Cave, a location where the British took a significant military

defeat. Regardless of the location, the British came to the Maroons in their locale to

end the war and secure documentation of the War’s end.

The basis for any battle the Maroons would engage in during the post-

emancipation period is the 1739 treaty. They were willing to take up arms when they

perceived the British as breaching terms of the treaty because the British suffered a

major defeat at Peace Cave. They brought the British back there to formalize the treaty

and through ritual, bound both the British and the Maroons into perpetuity. Any

breach in this treaty was an attempt to sever this relationship and preventing this

severance was worth the fight.

Finally, Maroons argue that the treaty was breached even before the ink dried.

The British took advantage of Cudjoe and did not give him all of the land they to

which they were entitled. The very boundaries of Accompong were therefore suspect

  40  

because the boundaries should have been as far south as Black River and as far north

as Montego Bay or even Falmouth. These collective narratives reveal the

Accompong’s hidden transcripts, the concerns that drove them to acquire more land

and refuse to pay taxes.

The next chapter examines the historical circumstances leading up to the

British attempt to eradicate both the Accompong lands as well as the Accompong

community. In 1842, the Land Allotment Act was passed as the legislative vehicle to

start this process. It is to this Act this work now turns.

  41  

Chapter 2: Land, Labor, and Race. Abrogating the 1739 Maroon Treaties (1842 – 1856)  Introduction

During the period of apprenticeship and emancipation in Jamaica (1834 – 38),

the Jamaican Assembly developed a goal for the Maroon communities: assimilating

them into the formerly enslaved population with the hope of capturing their labor so

that they would work on plantations. The Assembly had two objectives: abandoning

the 1739 treaties and forcing the Maroon communities to assimilate into the larger

population as part of the Crown’s subjects. These goals were attempted through

passage of the 1842 Land Allotment Act. The larger context for the Act was

appropriating Black labor by denying Blacks access to land during emancipation.

Plantation owners both during slavery and in post-emancipation Jamaica wanted the

Maroons to be part of the overall labor force. This chapter first reviews the Act’s

provisions and then discusses the historical conditions for passing it.

Before emancipation, for the better part of a century, Jamaican plantation

owners grappled with whether the Maroons were racially distinct (bearing different

physical characteristics or culturally dissimilar) from other people of African heritage.

Eventually, they decided that Maroons were not different, and so while the Maroons

could not be enslaved because of the treaty, they were regarded as a potential source

of labor. After emancipation, the British Crown, through the Colonial Secretary’s

Office (CSO), decided that the enslaved and Free Blacks were all equal under the law

and should enjoy the same legal standing. So for both groups, the legislature passed

  42  

laws (the emancipation law for the enslaved and the Land Allotment Act for the

Maroons) that appeared to grant Blacks the same level of participation in Jamaican

society, but in operation, denied them access to land. These laws became the public

transcript: “the self-portrait of dominant elites as they would have themselves seen . . .

It is designed to be impressive, to affirm and naturalize the power of dominant elites,

and to conceal or euphemize the dirty linen of their rule.”1 The self-portrait of the

Jamaican government was that they were improving the formerly enslaved “negroes”

so that they could handle the responsibilities of freedom. The government could use

schools and churches to teach the formerly enslaved to become industrious Christian

consumers who would continue to work on plantations, a goal that was at odds with a

land-holding peasantry.2

Colonial consensus that Maroons were the same race as former slaves justified

removing any “disabilities” the Maroons faced, namely the Maroons’ use of treaty-

granted community owned land that individuals could not buy and sell. Jamaica’s

Whites argued that the Maroons were, like the formerly enslaved, unprepared for a

free society because of their race, and they would have to assist them in a transition to

freedom. The Land Allotment Act was part of this scheme because it allowed the

government to start the process of including the Maroons as part of the peasantry by

reclaiming ownership of the communal Maroon lands and distributing lands as it saw

fit (not communally held). The colonial government retained the lands that had never

                                                                                                               1 Scott, 8. 2 Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832 - 1938 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 192.  

  43  

been allotted to members of the Maroon community because they believed the

Maroons had received enough land. The Assembly reasoned that if Maroons could

acquire and transfer land the way most people did under British common law, perhaps

they would sell their property, move to plantations and work on those plantations

instead.

Maroons, however, resisted assimilation into the former slave population by

insisting on their cultural and historical distinctiveness and refused to comply with the

Land Allotment Act. The passage of the Act marked the beginning, for the Maroons,

of a contested process in which the Maroons fought to keep both their land and

communities in place because the treaty could not guarantee them stability from

further governmental actions such as the Land Allotment Act. Additionally, keeping

the community intact required constant “battle” with the British (as the Maroons

referred to members of the Jamaican government and members of the Colonial

Secretary’s Office).

Liberalism and Land Ownership

One of the challenges the Maroons posed for the Jamaican government by

1842 concerning land was the Accompong insistence that the community owned it. As

a result, the Land Allotment Act ended up both restructuring Maroon land holdings to

individual ownership and justifying a government taking of Accompong land. Land

policy in the 19th century was guided by liberalism, a belief in the individual to make

decisions about themselves and how to dispose of their property in society.3 The

                                                                                                               3 Ibid., 4.

  44  

Maroons posed a philosophical challenge to this societal vision because in a colony

where "the building block of society was no longer the family, the clan, [or] the tribe,"

they insisted that their community remained their unit of society, and this applied to

land ownership.4

During the eighteenth century, vibrant discussions occurred between leading

thinkers about the importance of individually held property to building a society that

expanded political participation; and that the market was the primary force to

determine everyone’s relationship to land. In her article “Eighteenth-century

Justifications of Private Property,” Ursula Vogel discusses Adam Smith’s and John

Stuart Mill’s concerns about land that was not individually held.5 Vogel argued that

Smith and Mill were most concerned that the family’s right to property would

inevitably subvert the individual’s freedom to alienate, capitalize, and exchange

resources in profitable enterprises.6 In the feudal period, those who owned land in this

restrictive fashion were the only people entitled to political participation due to the

fact that “land somehow stands in a special moral and political relation to the

community.”7 Ultimately, “[i]n order to vindicate exclusive private property as a

matter of right, it was necessary to refer to the world’s natural resources as a kind of

common fund upon which all persons have some claim. It was this assumption which

enabled liberals to condemn feudal landownership as an unwarranted privilege,

                                                                                                               4 Ibid. 5 Ursula Vogel, "When the Earth Belonged to All: The Land Question in Eighteenth-Century Justifications of Private Property," Political Studies XXXVI, no. (1988). 6 Ibid., 104. 7 Ibid.

  45  

because it monopolized the ‘common fund’ and thus negated the maxim of equal

starting chances.”8 Under this market-driven approach, Maroons holding group land

interfered with the creation of a modern society where all could participate as political

beings.

The 1842 Land Allotment Act  

The overall objective of the Land Allotment Act was to reconfigure the

Maroon communities’ landholdings. To accomplish this, the statute first removed the

land from Maroon control by returning its ownership, unilaterally, from the Maroons

to the British Crown.9 Further, the statute created a commission designed to divide up

the land, whereby each Maroon would receive two acres of land for his/her own use

while each child and grandchild received only one acre of land each. The statute drew

a sharp distinction between the original Maroons and their descendants, allowing the

colony to divest the descendants of the original treaty lands in part by allotting them

less land: “every maroon . . . shall be at liberty to apply to the commissioners . . . a

further quantity of one acre for each such child or grandchild.”10 Later in the post-

emancipation period, the Jamaican government often claimed that no more “real”

Maroons lived in Accompong.11

                                                                                                               8 Ibid., 105. 9 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 10 Ibid. 11 Inspector General of Police, "March, 1906," 1B/576/333/CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. This letter simply acknowledges the receipt of documents referred to in the Gazette - “correspondence referring to the descendants of Maroons at Accompong.” This language reinforced the Jamaican government’s contention that the “real” Maroons no longer lived in Accompong.

  46  

The statute also detailed how Maroons were to secure their individual parcels

of land. Maroons were responsible for having the land surveyed, then each Maroon

would receive the land in fee simple (land that can be passed to heirs without any

restrictions). Each conveyance had to include a map of an area of land (plat) and

diagram, which would be available after the survey. If two Maroons were allotted the

same plot of land, the commissioners would resolve the dispute.12

Under the Land Allotment Act, while individual families held more land than

they had before, the community would no longer own the land; as a result, the

community was effectively disbanded. Individually held, land could be sold to people

who had no historical connection to the Maroon communities, an act that would

dissolve the communities.

The Land Allotment Act also eliminated the treaty-required superintendents

whose role was to ensure good relationships between the Maroon communities and the

government.13 The British created the superintendent position to minimally listen to

the Maroons so they would not declare war again.14 However, if the Maroons were to

assimilate into the general Black population, there would clearly be no need for

superintendents, because no Black sub-population would exist that needed pacifying.

It was also clear that the superintendents had formed close relationships with some in                                                                                                                12 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 13 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 14 Ibid.

  47  

the Maroon communities and functioned more like advocates on their behalf.15 These

relationships made it harder to merge the Maroon population into the general “negroe”

population, leading to the justification for the elimination of the superintendents’

positions. In order to phase them out, superintendents were to be paid £200 and each

one could use his homeu until 1 January 1843 so long as they assisted the

commissioners in allotting land to individual Maroons. If they failed to assist the

commissioners, they would forfeit their pay. These provisions were put in place to

ensure that the superintendents would implement the Act’s provisions and that

Maroons would comply with the policy decisions of the Jamaican Assembly and the

Crown.16

The Land Allotment Act further stated that after five years, if the lands

belonging to the Crown were not fully reallotted, the commissioners had the authority

to distribute it, particularly if the land proved to be insufficient for the Maroons living

there.17 These details left unanswered fundamental questions such as the role of

Maroons in a society without slavery; the reason why the Assembly decided to

reallocate Maroon lands in order to assimilate the Maroons into the rest of Jamaica

society; and the reason why the Assembly attempted to assimilate Maroons into the

greater Jamaican society. The answer to these questions reflects the relationship

understood by the Jamaican planters and their representatives in the Jamaican

                                                                                                               15 Barbara Kopytoff, “The Maroons of Jamaica; an Ethnohistorical Study of Incomplete Polities, 1655 - 1905” (University of Pennsylvania, 1973), 226 - 7. 16 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 17 Ibid.

  48  

Assembly between land, access to “negroe” labor, and race, which applied to all

people of African descent, whether enslaved, free Black, or Maroon. These concerns

were in place well before emancipation as far back as the Second Maroon War.

Chapter one focused on the Accompong Maroons, because the First Maroon

War was central to the way the community perceived itself. This chapter takes a

slightly different focus as it applies to all of Jamaica’s Maroon groups, including the

Mooretown, Charlestown, Scotts Hall, Trelawney, and the Accompong Maroons, but

only from the British perspective. The Jamaican Assembly rarely viewed Maroon

policy, up until the 1860s, in terms of each separate Maroon community. As such, this

chapter works to dissect British (including planters, the Jamaican Assembly, and the

Colonial Secretary’s Office) intentions and policies, as well as their impact on the

Maroons. This shift in perspective serves to contextualize the Jamaican Assembly’s

policies toward Maroons during the post-emancipation period.

Maroons as a Racially Distinct People?  

Among all the groups in Jamaica, the Maroons had a reputation as particularly

rebellious. Fighting two wars against the Maroons had proved exhausting for the

British settlers; the first ended with the 1739 peace treaty and the second war with the

Trelawney Maroons ended in 1795 after the government deported them to Nova

Scotia, Canada, and then to Sierra Leone. In the aftermath of the forced deportation of

the Trelawney Maroons, they were relieved both to have them off Jamaican soil and to

have peace with the remaining Maroons. After the Second Maroon War and into the

early nineteenth century, British settlers pondered these military foes they had to deal

  49  

with for over a century. Given the Maroons’ fighting spirit, they wondered, could they

be the same race as the seemingly docile slaves working on their plantations? Forty

years prior to emancipation, the British settlers turned to the language of race to

reconcile their understanding of the slave and Maroon populations.

Definitions of race differ by time period and prove rarely self-explanatory.

Race during the period between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries was

defined by type; that is, race was viewed as an unchanging biological construct.

People who were dark skinned were thought to be physically and psychologically

inferior to those with lighter skin. But typical understandings incorporated skin

coloring, height, and physiognomic facial characteristics, hair type, and intelligence,

which included culture, literature, religion, and morals.18 It was these descriptors, with

an emphasis on culture and religion that the British settlers used to determine that

Maroons and slaves were of the same race.

In 1739, when the Jamaican Assembly (with approval by the Crown’s Colonial

Secretary’s Office) and Maroons signed a treaty to end the First Maroon War, both

sides agreed that the Maroons constituted a community separate from the slaves. The

Jamaican government intentionally took this route in order to keep slaves from

interacting with this group of freed Blacks, so that the enslaved would not look to

these Blacks to learn rebelliousness in the pursuit of freedom. Therefore, in addition to

making sure that the Maroons were physically separated from the enslaved, the

                                                                                                               18 Michael Banton, Racial Theories, Second ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; reprint, 1998), 72. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "Physiognomy, N."; Nicholas Hudson, "From "Nation" to "Race": The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century Thought," Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 3 (1996).

  50  

Colonial government and the Crown also set the Maroons up as a force hostile to

escaping slaves. Indeed the treaty stipulated that the Maroons would capture and

return runaway slaves and act as a military force to suppress slave rebellions.19

Despite the legal distinction, the settlers already wondered whether any real

racial distinction between the two groups existed, focusing on cultural and religious

similarities. Writers during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century

unanimously agreed that both slaves and Maroons developed in culturally similar

ways, and assessed the cultural status of both groups grimly as barbarous heathens.

These cultural factors even trumped perceived phenotypical differences.20 Jamaican

society’s concern about Maroon culture is best evidenced in musings about the Blacks

and Christianity. After the Maroons won their freedom, a debate raged about whether

or not to convert them to Christianity. Some writers believed that Maroons were

beyond the reach of Christianity and so should be allowed to remain heathens.

Edwards, a planter who wrote about the importance of Christianity for instilling truth                                                                                                                19 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 20 Certainly planters considered distinctions between the enslaved, particularly with concerns about who was most likely to provoke rebellion. However, the understanding of different ethnicities of Africans (a geographical designation from where slaves were purchased) was not to create different racial categories among Africans. Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998). This assumption was that slaves from all of these places were, overall, “Negroes” and they all shared traits common to “Negroes.” For example, Edward Long described “Negroes” as “barbarous,” “stupid,” and lazy and does not exempt any particular ethnicity from these overall characterizations. If people of African heritage, for Long, demonstrated any real intelligence, it was only because it was the sort of intelligence that would be applied to labor: “The Aradas are thought to excel all the rest in knowledge of agriculture, yet their skill is extremely incompetent.” Long, 401,386, 387, 404. Ultimately, except for this Maroon problem, planters did not even consider the possibility of different “races” among “Negroes.” Distinguishing characteristics between ethnicities were to evaluate “Negroe” labor, and nothing more.

  51  

and moral character in people, nevertheless held that some peoples were so barbaric

and “savage” they could not be helped by it. He associated the Maroons with this

group and argued that, “they are in general ignorant of our language, and all of them

attached to the gloomy superstitions of Africa (derived from their ancestors) with such

enthusiastic zeal and reverential ardour, as I think can only be eradicated with their

lives.”21 Edwards indirectly put forth a radical solution for “negroes” who were

unwilling to accept their lot as slaves: killing them as they inherently were beyond the

redemptive power of Christianity.

Notions of race also affected the discussion of whether it made sense to

convert slaves to Christianity. Edward Long, another planter, argued that Africans

were part of a “barbarous race,” “more brutal and savage than the wild beasts of the

forest.”22 Ultimately, it was the slaves’ “barbarous stupidity” that prevented them from

being converted.23 Long’s colorful language deserves closer examination. He

attributed the unchangeable trait of barbarism, as well as propensities toward brutality

and savagery to slaves. Because “Negroes” were unable to change, they would be

unable to understand Christianity.24 Ultimately, race, coded as immutable barbarism,

was being used as a cover for the real fear: that slaves would use Christianity to rebel

                                                                                                               21 Edwards, xxxvi - xxxvii. 22 Long, 373. 23 Ibid., 428. 24 Ibid.; ibid.

  52  

against the institution of slavery.25 The Maroons, in his estimation, were no different

and also remained outside of the realm of Christianity.

Long wrote his observations prior to emancipation. Once the prospect of

emancipation drew near, the colonial government rethought its approach to ensuring

that slaves had access to Christianity. Indeed, in the late 1820s Benjamin Lucock

argued that the disposition of the “Negroe” actually recommended him for

Christianity. For Lucock, it was not whether the enslaved were the right “type” for

Christianity, but whether their culture, a changeable entity, would permit them to be

effective Christians. Hence, he wrote that they had a respect for the living; were able

to look up to their superiors; and had a “childlike ‘disposition to obedience.’”

Ultimately, “[t]his sentiment is still further and more unequivocally displayed in their

reverence for the ministers of religion . . . in the first place, it disposes them to receive

instruction, and even reproof and admonition in the most childlike simplicity; and then

it impels them to render any services in their power; and make endless little presents at

the expense of great self-deprivation in order to testify their respect for their spiritual

teachers.”26

Such optimism about the role of Christianity in West Indian societies was

shared across the Atlantic as Lord Glenelg, the Colonial Secretary, fashioned policy

on behalf of the Colonial Secretary’s Office (CSO) for both the apprenticeship and the

                                                                                                               25 See generally Emilia Viotti daCosta, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Shirley C. Gordon, God Almighty Make Me Free: Christianity in Preemancipation Jamaica (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 26 Benjamin Lucock, Jamaica: Enslaved and Free (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1846), 115 - 6.

  53  

post-emancipation period (1835 – 39). From London, the CSO ordered that to avoid

administrative duplication, the colonies should use the same religious structures that

existed prior to the ending of slavery in order to spread Christianity among the

formerly enslaved.27 Further, the CSO argued that it was religion that would guarantee

the success of the post-emancipation project.28 One prediction of the success of

Christianity among the former slaves would be that marriage rates would increase. The

CSO argued that “concubinage [w]as directly opposed to the spirit and precepts of

Christianity” and thus marriage would be critical to ensuring the “foundation of public

morals”29 among the formerly enslaved. Ultimately, Christianity was seen as a real

possibility for the former slaves, indeed a necessity to ensure that they would thrive in

the post-emancipation world. No longer were they perceived as being so barbaric that

they could not embrace the promise of Christianity.

While Maroons and the formerly enslaved were rarely discussed in the same

sentence unless it revolved around quelling rebellions, once slavery was abolished

similar notions about the groups developed. Both groups were initially dismissed as

unconvertible because of their inherent traits of barbarity. Yet the notion that the

ability to access Christianity was limited because of inherent racial characteristics

largely disappeared around emancipation. This conclusion helped to eliminate race as

                                                                                                               27 Lord Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies &C., 25 November 1835, 1835," House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online, London. 28 United Kingdom, In Explanation of the Measures Adopted by Her Majesty's Government for Giving Effect to the Act for the Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Colonies1838. Vol. V. 29 Ibid.

  54  

a basis for treating Maroons and former slaves differently in the post-emancipation

era.

Once emancipation became a certainty, the legal and societal ramifications for

differentiations based on race were apparent to the slaveholding class and the Crown,

with obvious implications for slaves and previously unexamined implications for the

Maroons. Ultimately, British settlers and the CSO no longer attempted to identify

differences in phenotype or cultural or religious backgrounds between the Maroons

and the slave population especially when these characteristics no longer served as a

bar to conversion to Christianity. Thus, any differences posited as existing between the

two groups were created solely by operation of law as a result of the treaty and

legislation passed by the Assembly.

“Equal” By Law  

In the late 1820s and the early 1830s, the British Parliament debated the

specifics of emancipation. Parliament was torn between granting freedom for the

enslaved and the planters’ need for labor if they were going to continue to make

profits. Therefore, colonial officials argued that they had to place the former slaves

and White Jamaicans on the same footing in post-slavery societies. Glenelg directed

that during slavery, the public transcript, the legislation in effect, “established

innumerable distinctions of the most invidious nature in favour of Europeans and their

descendants, and to the prejudice of persons of African birth or origin.”30 However,

                                                                                                               30 Lord Glenelg, "Circular Despatch - Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, November 6, 1837," Papers Relating to the Abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies, London. While

  55  

under his interpretation, the emancipation laws made sure that “[t]hese distinctions are

also abolished . . . Laws conceived in general terms, that is embracing free men of

every description, and therefore apparently equal, were yet passed with scarcely a

disguised reference to a state of society which no longer exists . . .” and created the

new public transcript.31

To the extent that Parliament intended that the emancipation laws guaranteed

equality before the law, this was also the stated goal of the Land Allotment Act. Lord

Glenelg communicated regularly with each of the British Caribbean colonies about

how to implement emancipation’s goals. He did not write explicitly about the

Maroons; however, his documents reveal much about what the British bureaucracy

thought about race and its impact on the Caribbean after slavery, particularly as it

applied to the use of land. The language he used in his dispatches mirrored some of the

issues and language used by other officials in documents pertaining to the Maroons,

specifically that the legislature needed to pass a “bill to relieve the maroons of this

island from certain disabilities imposed upon them by law . . .”32 It also mirrored

language used in the Jamaican bureaucracy’s notes concerning Maroon land conflicts

after the passing of the Land Allotment Act.

While the newly freed Blacks knew how to labor, they no longer desired to

work for others. The way former slaves could guarantee labor independence was by

                                                                                                               Glenelg stated that eliminating distinctions between “Europeans” and “perons of African origin,” there was no intent to make sure both groups were equal before the law. 31 Ibid. 32 Jamaica Assembly, "Prayer to Read the Maroon Bill a Second Time," Jamaica Assembly (Spanish Town, Jamaica: 1840).

  56  

owning land. Planters believed that former slaves had an insatiable desire for land and

that broadening land ownership to include the formerly enslaved threatened the labor

pool. Hence, once former slaves finally earned their freedom in 1838, the Colonial

Secretary, in keeping with the planters’ interests, tried to deprive Blacks of access to

land, the “dirty linen” hidden by the public transcript.33 Therefore, in the post-

emancipation period, while the connection between race and slavery was theoretically

severed, race continued to define land ownership. As Derrick Bell puts it: “for a

complex of racial reasons, whites are not willing to alter traditional policies and

conduct which effectively deprive blacks of . . . rights and opportunities” and a law

that was neutral on its face reinforced the inequity intended in the post-emancipation

laws.34

To accomplish this, the CSO explicitly stated that their policy was to keep

Blacks on plantations, because access to land would not contribute their civilization.

Whether former slaves would secure private property was never an issue. Any

property held by private landowners would never be accessible to former slaves

because it was far too expensive. However, former slaves thought that they could

acquire Crown Lands, lands owned by the British Crown. Such land did not

necessarily have an owner who was present and using it. Peasants, the former slaves,

squatted on and claimed these Crown Lands as their own. Such extra-legal activity not                                                                                                                33 Thwarting the ability of former slaves to secure land for themselves in post-emancipation societies was not only the goal in Jamaica, as this occurred in many societies who abolished slavery later than Jamaica. See generally Frederick Cooper, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott, Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Scott. 34 Derrick Bell, Race, Racism, and Ameriacn Law (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1980; reprint, Second), 3.

  57  

only represented a breach of ownership laws, it also deprived the plantations of greatly

needed labor. Glenelg wrote: “The object is not to force the cultivation of the present

staples by depriving the Negroes of every other resource for subsistence, but merely to

condense and keep together the population in such a manner that it may always

contain a due proportion of labourers.”35 Overall, he argued that if laborers were

allowed to scatter after the apprenticeships onto virgin lands, then they would escape

the civilizing forces of government.36 Further, the CSO instructed the colonial

legislatures to take measures prohibiting squatting; to live on or use a piece of land

would require “a proprietary title,” proof that a particular person owned the property.37

Finally, the CSO wanted to ensure that Crown Lands were priced so that

purchase was prohibitive for peasants. Glenelg instructed the governors that they were,

to fix such a price upon all Crown lands as may place them out of the reach of persons without capital . . . it is possible, by fixing the price of fresh land so high as to place it above the reach of the poorest class of settlers, to keep the labour market in its most prosperous state from the beginning. This precaution, by ensuring a supply of labourers at the same time that it increases the value of the land, makes it more profitable to cultivate old land well than to purchase new.38

Glenelg’s guidance for interpreting the post-emancipation law points to the divide

between the law’s ideals (the public transcript, the “self-portrait of dominant elites”39)

and implementation. Specifically, while he explicitly exempts all “negroes” from land

acquisition, he encourages the colonies to follow the new laws because they had

                                                                                                               35Lord Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London. 36Ibid. 37 Ibid., p. 10. 38 Ibid. 39 Scott, 8.

  58  

“established innumerable distinctions of the most invidious nature in favour of

Europeans and their descendants, and to the prejudice of persons of Africa birth or

origin.”40 Indeed, Glenelg’s insistence upon ensuring that “negroes” remain laborers

meant that the colonial officials implementing the emancipation laws did not function

as a “neutral, value-free arbiters, independent of and unaffected by social and

economic relations, political forces, and cultural phenomena.”41

It is important to note that these policies were intended to apply to former

slaves; Maroons defied these strictures. They were already freed Blacks because they

had previously fought and won a treaty guaranteeing peace and freedom. The treaty

stipulated that labor could not be required of the Maroons.42 Further complicating the

government’s access to Maroon labor was the treaty that guaranteed land to four

communities, all of which used that land to support themselves.43 However, the British

intended to extend the policy of land deprivation well beyond the former slaves. The

Land Allotment Act explicitly required that the government take back the lands

granted to the Maroon communities, distribute some of the land, and keep the land that

                                                                                                               40 Glenelg, "Circular Despatch - Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, November 6, 1837," Papers Relating to the Abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies, London. 41 David Kairys, ed. The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 4. In this work, Kairys provides a critical legal critique of the law as value neutral and devoid of political agendas. The great source of “the law’s power: it enforces, reflects, constitutes, and legitimizes dominant social and power relations without a need for or the appearance of control from outside and by means of social actors who largely believe in their own neutrality and the myth of legal reasoning.” ibid., 5. 42 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 43 Ibid.

  59  

did not get distributed to the communities.44 Regardless of the Maroons’ legal status,

the British hoped they would become a part of the larger Black workforce, although

this is not revealed explicitly.

The planters’ intent regarding using Maroons’ labor can be culled by

examining their assessment of how Maroons worked on their treaty-provided lands.

One term of the treaty provided that the Jamaican governor hold a meeting with the

Maroons once a year, providing an opportunity for governmental officials and other

White visitors to observe the Maroons, sometimes on the Maroons’ terms.45 An

account of these visits indicates a sense of what Maroon life was like before

emancipation and includes information about the division of labor in the colonies.

These accounts must be read carefully, of course, they demonstrate an inability to

appreciate this community in a manner that would be expected during this period and

reveal how little the observers knew about Maroon life or culture.

The descriptions about work life in a Maroon colony, particularly as described

by Bryan Edwards, includes three critiques: that the Maroons were lazy; that only

Maroon women actually did any labor; and that visitors were expected to give food to

                                                                                                               44 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 45 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).

  60  

Maroons upon arrival.46 Edwards remarked that the Maroons did little to cultivate food

in the Maroon villages and were not inclined toward “sober industry,” and; that they

had a “repugnance to the labour of tilling the earth.”47 He continued that Maroons

would rather steal yams, plantains, corn, and other vegetables from other plantations

than grow their own. Finally, he stated “the ground was always in a shocking state of

neglect and ruin.”48 Edwards concluded that the Maroons did not make up an

industrious workforce and proved to be lazy.

Edwards also commented extensively on gender divisions in agricultural labor

in the Maroon villages. Specifically, he discussed the way that land was cleared.

Women burned the trunks of trees until they fell over. Edwards remarked that there

was no other way for the Maroons to do this work and was concerned that women

were doing too much difficult work: women were not only clearing the land, but also

laborers “of the field” and “every other species of drudgery.”49 There is an irony in his

seeming solicitousness, since at this time, female slaves often did difficult work in the

fields. Women played a key part in helping to process sugar cane.50 Edward Long

making the same comments about the Eboe women stating that “[t]he Ebo men are

lazy, and averse to every laborious employment; the women performing almost all the

                                                                                                               46 Bryan Edwards, An Historical Survey of the Island of Saint Domingo Together with an Account of the Maroon Negroes in the Island of Jamaica; and a History of the War in the West Indies in 1793 and 1794 (London: John Stockdale, 1801). 47 Ibid., 321. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Lucille Mathurin Mair, A Historical Study of Women in Jamaica: 1655 - 1844 (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2006), 198 - 200.

  61  

work in their own country . . .”51 Judith Carney noted comments European observers

made on women’s labor asserting that African women were subjected to unbelievable

servitude as they processed rice along the Gambia River.52 Watching women work so

hard may have provided some example of what was possible for using Maroon labor

because the women already knew how to do agricultural work and could clear trees to

make land available for profitable crops.

Finally, Edwards remarked upon what was required of visitors when they

visited the Maroon villages. He wrote “[t]he visitors too were not only fleeced of their

money, but were likewise obliged to furnish the feast, it being indispensably

necessary, on such occasions, to send beforehand wine and provisions of all kinds . .

.”53 Edwards chose the loaded word “fleeced” to describe the welcome given by the

Maroons, thus supporting his claim that Maroons have a “repugnance to the labour of

tilling the earth.”54 Planters held dim views of slave laborers, often asserting their

slaves were lazy and would not work properly unless threatened by the whip. Edwards

is representative of other British viewers: visiting the Maroons reinforced their

already-held conclusions that Maroons were generally lazy, like the other Blacks, but

that, as the women were both familiar with agriculture and able to work hard, their

labor could be harnessed to the plantations’ benefit. The British had some hope that

                                                                                                               51 Long, 403 - 4. 52 Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 26 - 7. 53 Edwards, 322. 54 Ibid., 321.

  62  

the Maroons would and could become part of a larger African-heritage workforce,

even before the end of slavery.

Challenges with Contextualizing the Land Allotment Act  

From the British perspective, differential treatment of the Maroons based on a

peaceable settlement of the Wars and the treaty had come to an end: if Blacks and

Maroons were not separate people, there was no justification for treating them

differently. Maroons and former slaves were the same people and should be

recognized as such under the law.

Nevertheless, the reasons for rearranging Maroon land holdings were never

explicitly stated in the Land Allotment Act. Scarcely any legislative history for the Act

exists because no explicit sources explaining the Jamaica Assembly’s intentions have

survived. Instead, the provisions contained within the Act itself convey the goals of its

framers. Notwithstanding the paucity of sources connected to the Land Allotment Act,

a slight legislative history exists. Maroons initiated the legislative process by

appealing to the legislature to resolve longstanding problems connected with

restrictions on road travel and the colonial state’s handling of Maroon lands.55

Maroons did send in letters to the Assembly in the late 1830s, which were

placed in the legislative record. As recorded, the letters are not reflective of the ways

in which Maroons use language nor do they fully represent Maroon objectives; in fact,

it could be argued that the letters distort the Maroons’ intent. Typical letters from

Maroon communities that have survived are written in very simple English and often

                                                                                                               55Carey, 409.

  63  

contain both spelling and grammatical errors, which reflect the Maroons’ lack of

access to a formal educational system.56

One example of Accompong Maroon writing is a request for more land to

support the community. In this letter, the Colonel (the title given to each Maroon

group’s political leader) presented the Maroons as very humble and respectfully

acknowledged the Colonial Secretary by correctly addressing him as “Your

Excellency.” He then directly stated what he expected from the Colonial Secretary’s

office – more land, because their lands had grown fallow:

We have been noticing advertisements concerning unpatented lands of this Island, and regret to note that there is none mentioned as in St Elizabeth, we therefore beg to call your attention to that piece which situates between Cooks Bottom Elderspring [now Elderslie?] and Accompong (Maroon Town), and which is chiefly accupied [sic] by wild animals, and ask you to be pleased to grant us the same felicity as in Portland and other parishes mentioned in your advertisement, as our progress has been retarded for the lack of good lands for cultivation, and by so doing we are sure it will be the means of stoping [sic] a lot of hameless [sic] and unemployed young men from going to Colon and other place who may become the backbone of our island for further generations.57

                                                                                                               56While the Maroons attained freedom through the treaties, there was no commitment to helping them build their communities after slavery, including setting up an educational system for their children. The design of the treaties was to segregate them from slave populations so that they would not pose a threat to Jamaican plantation societies. Further, based on the way that Maroons educated each other, through the use of oral history about their communities, it is unclear that they would have accepted a British educational system after the treaty was signed. For an example of Maroon writing, see where Colonel Wright wrote “To His Excelency the Governor of this Island Sir Augustas W.L. Hemming. We the undersigned one, of her Majesty so Subject have the honour most respectfully to write to his Excelency Expressively and to explain to you that on the 16th May some of our men working on part of our back land which were unsurveyed was attacked by one Inspector twelve constable, one Bailiff, two rural policeman and some other civillious [sic] with them, with arms and for which I consider to be abridge of the peace.” Henry Ezekiel Wright, "Letter to Augustus Hemming About Attacks against Maroons, May 28, 1900," 1B/576/365/CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. In this sample, it is clear what the Colonel is concerned about and the language is not confusing. 57 Henry W. Rowe, "1905," 1B/576/333/CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  64  

This particular request makes clear what ails the community: they needed more land to

support the community not only with foodstuffs, but also ensuring employment and

reflects a concrete request as opposed to an aspirational principle.

Before delving into the content of the Maroon requests as recorded by the

legislature, there are three important points to consider about their trustworthiness as

documents. The original, presumably handwritten petitions are absent from the

archives. Based on the correspondence sent by the Maroons in the post-emancipation

period, they did not submit petitions to anyone. In general, when Maroon groups made

requests of the government, they spoke through the Colonel, who would write a letter

to the applicable government agent, attaching his signature, along with those of the

members of his council.58

The language in these seemingly rewritten Maroon petitions tended to reflect

the Assembly’s legislative priorities and were not synchronized with what the

Maroons generally wanted for their communities. The same petition asserts the

following Maroon demands:

That amid the varied and important changes which have taken place in the colony, whereby the condition of the labouring population has been

                                                                                                               58 Many of my assumptions about the Maroon political structure are based, in part, on the letters sent by Maroons to the Jamaican government, because the letters are signed by other people with military appellations in addition to the Colonel. A letter written by Colonel Wright concerning some Maroons who had been roughed up by law enforcement and surveyors, was also signed by Peter James Rowe, who held the title of “Major” and John Reid Foster, who held the title of “Captain.” Colonel Wright, "June 13, 1905," Letter, 1B/5/76/33/3 (CSO)2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. Further, a conversation with Alice Baldwin-Jones, at the time a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Columbia University, included a discussion of the political structure of the Accompong Maroons. She argued that the Colonel is elected and sets up a council of learned/wise Maroons familiar with the political workings of the community. Alice Baldwin-Jones, conversation, September 2007. Finally, while I conducted interviews in Accompong in 2008, it became clear to me that the people with whom I was allowed contact were all members of the Colonel’s council.

  65  

considerably improved, petitioners have remained a separate and distinct people, subject to the operation of peculiar and oppressive laws, and must continue to labour under these disabilities, unless the house will take measures to repeal the enactments of which they complain, and place them upon an equal footing with the other inhabitants of the colony.59

The only way the legislature could have accomplished putting the Maroons on “an

equal footing with the other inhabitants” was by repealing the treaty; a document that

the Maroons argue is unchangeable based on the way it was sealed. When both the

British and the Maroons combined blood, rum, and dirt in a calabash and drank that

mixture, it created a permanent bond between the parties that could never be broken, a

literal and symbolic seal for the 1739 treaty.60 Any legislative history implying that the

Maroons would agree to repeal statutes including the 1739 treaty would be

fundamentally at odds with the Maroons’ belief that the treaty was an enduring

document and therefore does not reflect the community’s priorities.

It also seems that the CSO, and by extension, the Assembly on the one hand,

and the Maroons, on the other, deployed the term “disabilities” in contrary ways. For

the Maroons, remaining a distinct and separate people was never considered a

disability. Rather, Maroons considered their separateness an advantage in that

remaining separate never compromised who they were as a people.61 However, the

Assembly, using the term as Glenelg had, perceived the continued functioning of the

Maroons as a legally distinct people to be a disability (for Jamaica), because they                                                                                                                59 Jamaica House of Assembly, "Petition of Certain Maroons of Mooretown," in Vote of Assembly (1840 - 41). 60 Bilby; Kopytoff; Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 61“Viewing their communally held lands not only as a sacred inheritance from their ancestors, but also as a key to their survival as distinct peoples, they have staunchly resisted all efforts – whether by outsiders, or by Maroon defectors – to compromise the integrity of these territories.” Bilby, 350.

  66  

would not be assimilated into a larger community of Black workers. As a result, while

Jamaica’s Maroon groups tried to move their own agenda through the Assembly after

emancipation, they played into the CSO’s and Assembly’s policy priorities of treating

everyone (or at least all potential Black laborers) the same way under the law. At this

point the legislature enacted the Land Allotment Act.

Ridding the Maroons of “Innumerable Distinctions”  

Glenelg’s concern with ridding people of “innumerable distinctions” was

extended to the Maroons with the Land Allotment Act. Its first step was abrogating the

1739 treaty with the intention of assimilating Maroons into general Jamaican society.

Ultimately, from the Jamaican Assembly’s point of view, these distinctions in land

ownership were clear “disabilities” for the Maroons and impeded Maroons from

functioning like other residents of the colony.62 The exact content of these

“disabilities,” as seen from the British perspective, were evident in the laws

overturned by the passing of the Land Allotment Act. Indeed, the Act begins by listing

the statutes it was designed to overturn.

The first two pieces of legislation listed in the Land Allotment Act for repeal

are the treaties themselves, which originally granted Maroons freedom from slavery

and a significant land grant to support the communities.63 The distinctions created by

                                                                                                               62 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 63 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739); "An Act for Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel Robert Bennett,

  67  

the treaties for the Maroons are clear: (1) they would be one of the few Black

populations in Jamaica that were not enslaved; (2) they would be one of the only

Black populations that owned land granted by the British crown; (3) they would be

one of the only Black communities in Jamaica that would be required to serve a

military purpose, namely crushing any rebellions and returning runaway slaves. They

were also compelled to help defend Jamaica should a foreign power invade. Repealing

the treaties would enable the British to capture Maroon lands so that the Maroons

would have to labor for planters desperate for labor in the years following

emancipation.

Labor was the focal point of the second set of repealed statutes. The legislature

wanted to encourage and reinforce the Maroons’ role of both capturing runaway slaves

and stopping slave rebellions; this would be encouraged both by payment and by

providing the Maroons with arms if necessary.64 They also repealed legislation

stipulating that Maroons were to be paid and the terms of their work were to be

memorialized in a contract and signed by both parties.65 These laws originally sought

to maintain a strict division between the free Maroons and the slaves who worked on

                                                                                                               and Quao the Commander of the Rebels, for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provision for Four White Persons to Reside at Crawford's Town and New Nanny Town, and for Granting Freedom to Two Negroes Who Were Guides to Colonel Bennett," in Acts of Assembly, Passed in the Island of Jamaica, From the Year 1681 to the Year 1769 inclusive (1740). 64 "An Act of Authorizing His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, or the Governor or Commander in Chief for the Time Being, to Employ the Maroon Negroes of Accompong Town, for the Internal Defence and Security of This Island," (Jamaica: Laws of Jamaica, 1798); Blake. 65 "An Act to Repeal "an Act for the Better Order and Government of the Negroes Belonging to the Several Negroe-Towns and for Preventing Them from Purchasing of Slaves; and for Encouraging the Said Negroes to Go in Pursuit of Runaway Slaves; and for Other Purposes . . . Mentioned; and for Giving the Maroon Negroes Further Protection and Security; for Altering the Mode of Trial; and for Other Purposes," (Jamaica: Laws of Jamaica, 1791).

  68  

the plantations closer to the coasts. Indeed plantation society heavily relied on such

distinctions between classes.66

However, due to post-emancipation labor shortages, the legislature reversed

the requirement that the descendants of the Trelawney Maroons had to stay away from

Jamaica, which suggests that the government had hopes with regard to that

population.67 They turned to the Trelawney Maroons as workers, revealing the

desperate need for additional workers once slave labor could not be ensured.68

Planters firmly believed that without the institution of slavery, they could no

longer profitably raise crops in the Caribbean, the crux of their opposition to

emancipating slaves. As they eventually acknowledged Great Britain’s move toward

emancipating the enslaved, they turned their legislative efforts to keeping former

slaves on their plantations for as long as possible. During emancipation, they therefore

lobbied the British Parliament to reimburse them for lost property, arguing that they

no longer could count the enslaved as one of their assets. Because Parliament was

forcing them to part with their property, they had to be reimbursed for it.69

Why Assimilating Maroons Meant Restructuring Land  

                                                                                                               66 See generally Kamau Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). 67 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 68 William James Gardner, A History of Jamaica: From Its Discovery by Christopher Columbus to the Present Time: Including an Account of Its Trade and Agriculture; Sketches of the Manners, Habits, and Customs of All Classes of Its Inhabitants; and a Narrative of the Progress of Religion and Education in the Island. (London: Elliot Stock, 1873), 412. 69 Holt.

  69  

In a nod to the concerns expressed by the Maroon communities and to ensure

that Maroon communities were functioning under the same laws as the former slaves,

the Land Allotment Act ostensibly eliminated provisions offensive to the Maroons.

However, it is clear that the concerns stated by Maroons were never seriously

considered, and that the objective of both the CSO and the Assembly was to eliminate

racial distinctions under the law for their own ends. They achieved this by taking the

land from Maroon ownership and returning it to the Crown. Only then would the

newly created commissioners redistribute these Crown lands to individual Maroons to

be owned individually. Finally, if the lands were not completely redistributed to

Maroons, the commissioners would decide what to do with the remaining land.

The British, in the case of the Maroons, were not interested in eliminating

communal land holding as a singular goal. Land interfered with the ability of

“negroes” to work on the plantations, so the legislature sought to separate them from

it. The first piece of legislation repealed by the Land Allotment Act was the 1791

legislation that encouraged Maroons to relinquish their share of communally-held

lands in a sovereign community in exchange for becoming a Jamaican free person of

color.70 The statute provided incentives for Maroons to leave their community and the

legal supports their community provided. In order to do this, Maroons had to report to

a court and gave up their share of Maroon lands in return for papers confirming the

                                                                                                               70 "An Act to Repeal "an Act for the Better Order and Government of the Negroes Belonging to the Several Negroe-Towns and for Preventing Them from Purchasing of Slaves; and for Encouraging the Said Negroes to Go in Pursuit of Runaway Slaves; and for Other Purposes . . . Mentioned; and for Giving the Maroon Negroes Further Protection and Security; for Altering the Mode of Trial; and for Other Purposes," (Jamaica: Laws of Jamaica, 1791).

  70  

completion of this step. Maroons then had to move away from community lands and

sign up for the militia in their new location. This provision explicitly tried to

disaggregate the relationship between Maroons and their lands and communities, even

while Jamaica was a slave society, because, as the legislature envisioned it, for former

Maroons to support themselves, they would have to work on plantations. Also of note

in this particular legislation are the numerous provisions requiring proper payment and

acknowledgement of the labor relationship between the plantation owner and a

Maroon via contract. Maroons would be fully supported and have the force of the state

behind them if they were to work on the plantations. Further, the statute required that

Maroons would become part of the militia, thus filling another needed labor position.

The logic of the Land Allotment Act was as effective as it was clear: it would

be much harder to wrestle land away from an entire community than from individual

members of that community. But taking land away from the Maroons would be critical

if the planters were to conscript Maroon bodies to work on their plantations. So

although the reasons for removing Maroon control over their own land was couched in

terms of legal equality, it was the need for labor that was the primary motivation for

the passage of the legislation.

Even after the repeal of former Acts relevant to Maroons and the provisions

laid out in the Land Allotment Act, numerous amendments to the 1842 statute were

subsequently passed in the Assembly to rectify problems that arose after the fact.

Despite the fact that discussions of the other amendments proposed in 1840 are no

longer in the legislative record, they can be gleaned through the language in the 1850

  71  

amendment, where the goals of amendments from the intervening years were

enumerated. Only then were the objectives of the 1850 amendment themselves were

laid out. The first amendment was passed in 1844 and it extended the time during

which allotments could be made by two years, which indicates that Maroons were not

eager to sign up for individual allotments.

In 1847, the legislature extended the time to reallocate the land to individual

Maroons yet again. Some tension exists in the historical record about whether or not

the Maroons actually signed up for their allotments at all. Some Maroons received the

individual allotments, but the existence of multiple extensions in the timeframe of the

legislation points to the fact that many more resisted the provisions of the Land

Allotment Act.

The Act itself reinforced a two-part process for allocating the lands: (1)

allotment and (2) providing the individual with both title to the land and a legitimate

survey.71 So while some Maroons were willing to break with the tradition of

communal ownership, they were not keen on submitting to being surveyed. The

surveys, in fact, became a sticking point in the time period following the passing of the

Land Allotment Act. They viewed surveyors suspiciously, believing they were there to

take away the Maroons’ treaty-won land.72

                                                                                                               71 "An Act to Extend the Period for Granting and Conveying to the Several Maroons in This Island the Respective Allotments Made to Them under the Acts of Fifth Victoria, Chapter Forty-Nine; Seventh Victoria, Chapter Thirty-Four; and Ninth Victoria, Chapter Twenty-Seven," in 31 - 2 (1850). 72 Surveying became such a sensitive process that even politics in Accompong could have dictated a Colonels’ removal because they were perceived as not taking a rigorous line against surveying. Maroons generally perceived surveyors as removing Maroon lands. Jameson Calder, "1897," 1B/576/365/CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  72  

To address these issues, yet another amendment was passed in 1850 ordering

that as long as a plat and diagram73 were attached to each allotment, the

commissioners could grant the conveyances,74 indicating that Maroons regularly

disputed the surveyors’ conclusions, so much so that they refused to complete the

process. Finally, the last 1856 amendment generally extended the time period for

enforcing the Land Allotment Act, because it seemed that while allotments were

authorized, the grants and conveyances were again not executed: it attempted to

remedy the same problem seen in 1850. The only reason revealed in the legislative

history for why the grants and conveyances may not have been executed was because

no surveys were completed and therefore the “plats and diagrams” were not present

with the allotments.

No more amendments were made to the Land Allotment Act after 1856, nine

years before the Morant Bay Rebellion. The goal of eliminating the land distinctions

between the former slaves and Maroons had not been achieved. Although the

Assembly saw them as racially the same people, the Maroons continued to hold their

land corporately and still adhered to the terms of the treaties bringing the Maroon

Wars to an end. The legislative record is silent about why the Jamaican Assembly did

not force the Maroons to implement their goals.

                                                                                                               73 Each allotment was expected to have a piece of land (plat) and a map of that land attached to it for both the individual’s and the colony’s future reference. 74 "An Act to Extend the Period for Granting and Conveying to the Several Maroons in This Island the Respective Allotments Made to Them under the Acts of Fifth Victoria, Chapter Forty-Nine; Seventh Victoria, Chapter Thirty-Four; and Ninth Victoria, Chapter Twenty-Seven," in 31 - 2 (1850).

  73  

The Morant Bay Rebellion added a twist to assimilating the Maroons into the

Jamaican population. In 1865, Paul Bogle led a group Black peasants who were

disappointed with the process of freedom in a large rebellion in the Eastern part of

Jamaica. They sought better treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system; full

political participation in Jamaican society, including the opportunity to fully

participate in the legislature; and access to a better life, either with higher wages or

with increased access to land of their own. By the time the Morant Bay Rebellion

started, Governor Eyre saw some usefulness is keeping Maroons a separate body, even

without a definable racial distinction between them and the Blacks who rebelled. In an

act of historical irony, the Jamaican government relied upon the 1739 treaty to call up

the Eastern Maroons (generally the Mooretown Maroons) to end the rebellion. This

occurred despite the fact that the Jamaican government never did relinquish its goal of

assimilating the Maroons into the larger “negroe” population, as can be seen in the

land disputes that arose after the Morant Bay Rebellion.

Maroon Concerns about the Land Allotment Act  

In light of this legislative history ending in 1856, one can only guess the

Maroons’ reaction to the new laws concerning their lands. Oral histories and the early

letters they wrote to petition the Jamaican Assembly provide some hints into their

states of mind at the time. Further, the fact that Maroons refused to take the detailed

measures to implement the Act speaks silent volumes.

Three fundamental conflicts arose between the Jamaican government and the

Maroons. But none of these are explicitly laid out in the historical record; indeed it

  74  

seems the two groups never discussed them. First and foremost were the contradictory

viewpoints about the permanence of the 1739 treaty. Second, they disagreed about

whether the Maroons were a separate people; while the Maroons would not argue that

they were racially distinct from former slaves, they used history and culture as factors

distinguishing them from Jamaica’s “negroes.” Finally, both the government and the

Maroons disagreed about the nature of land ownership: corporate ownership of land

became a sticking point between the parties.

While the planters and the Assembly concluded that there was no “racial” basis

for treating them differently, the Maroons became more convinced over time that they

were a distinct people from the formerly enslaved.75 Indeed, in the Maroon language,

Kromanti, all British (the Maroons make no distinctions between the British: they are

called that whether they are from the CSO, the Governor’s office, the Assembly, or the

planter class) and Jamaica’s other Blacks are called “obroni,” meaning outsider.76

There were three sources of tension between Maroons and the formerly

enslaved. First, the Second Maroon War highlighted the distinction between the

enslaved and Maroons, even as reflected in British narratives of the event. The Second

Maroon War was precipitated by an incident in which Black slaves whipped two

Trelawney Maroons for stealing hogs from a plantation. The Maroons were furious,

because the British allowed a non-Maroon to punish members of the Maroon

                                                                                                               75Maroons still see themselves as separate from Jamaicans. 76Kenneth Bilby writes extensively about the obroni/Maroon distinction. “Maroons considered themselves (and to a large extent still do) a people apart; all others, categorized as obroni, were potential enemies.” Bilby, 291. The Accompong also refer to outsiders as a “biniquoi.” Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008).

  75  

community. From their perspective, they should not have been allowed to judge

Maroons because the treaty stipulated that Maroons judged their own people. The

legal basis for the difference between the Maroons and the enslaved was rooted in the

treaty. Using a slave to punish Maroons infuriated the Trelawney because it directly

contravened the treaty, which provided that any penalty short of capital punishment

was to be administered by Maroons only.77 Further, while the Accompong did not rise

to the defense of the Trelawney Maroons when they started a war against the British,

the Accompong claim that they and the Trelawney Maroons shared a common

lineage.78 Ultimately, one core difference between the Jamaican government and

Maroon perspectives is that the Maroons saw (and continue to see) themselves as a

separate people from the other Jamaicans of African heritage, such that the Maroons

would resist all attempts to assimilate into that larger population.79

The second primary historical difference between Maroons and the British was

the nature of the treaty and the enduring obligations embedded in it. It is somewhat

surprising that the British decided to unilaterally abandon the 1739 treaties with

Jamaica’s Maroon groups, despite the attitudes of racial and cultural superiority they

so clearly displayed. For the Maroons, breaking the treaty was simply not possible:

Cudjoe and John Guthrie, the treaty’s signatories, could not separate their blood.

                                                                                                               77 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 78 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). 79 Bilby, 291.

  76  

Hence, the attempt to redistribute lands won in the “blood treaty”80 and to try to equate

Maroons with other people of African heritage in Jamaica was felt as a betrayal they

could not have imagined.

Finally, the Maroons were seriously vexed by the government’s attempt not

only to reorder who owned the Maroons’ lands, but also to dissolve corporate land

ownership by that community. To this day, Maroon lands are not owned individually,

but held by the entire Maroon community as a unified body.81 The Maroons most

likely presumed that the treaty actually justified corporate land ownership: the British

gave the lands; the Maroons were responsible for determining how that land should be

handled. Any outsider making decisions about the distribution of Maroons lands

would be trammeling on their rights as an autonomous body, a concept enshrined in

the treaty. Hence, the Land Allotment Act reflects a gulf between British and Maroon

understandings of the nature of the treaty.

In Jamaica after slavery, the Maroon response to the Land Allotment Act

reflects the first in a series of resistant activities connected to both Maroon lands and

community. If the legislation had worked in the first place, there would be no need to

continue passing amendments for its implementation. Given the significant differences

in understanding over the role of land, the Maroons’ failure to comply with the law

became an act of resistance.

                                                                                                               80 Ibid. 81Current maps still label Accompong as “Accompong Maroon Lands” which indicates that there is no individual ownership and that they are owned by the entire community. Further, Contancia Foster also stated that anyone could use Accompong lands, but that no individual person can own the land. Jamaica Land Valuation Agency, "Map Sheet 43d," (Kingston, Jamaica: 2008); Thompson, "Interview with Constantia Foster," (2008).

  77  

James C. Scott comments on the hidden transcript and the infrapolitics82 of

slave or peasant groups. He writes that these means of rebellion, “of disguising

ideological subordination are somewhat analogous to the patterns by which, in my

experience, peasants and slaves have disguised their efforts to thwart material

appropriation of their labor, their production, and their property: for example,

poaching, foot-dragging, pilfering, dissimulation, flight. Together, these forms of

insubordination might suitably be called the infrapolitics of the powerless.”83

Foot-dragging, for example, is emblematic as resistance because of its lack of

activity. It slows production so that the proprietor cannot extract as much profit from

workers or products. This suggests something about the power relationship between

the British Crown (with Jamaican inhabitants as its subjects) and the Maroons. The

power relationship between these two parties is defined by treaty. Treaties

memorialize a particular power relationship, that of equals, equal sovereign powers.

And indeed, when the Maroons ignored the Land Allotment Act, as a sovereign

power, they reasserted their status as equals.

Conclusion

Through the late eighteenth century, the CSO, Jamaican Assembly, and some

Jamaican planters grappled with whether the Maroons were actually a different race

from others of African heritage residing in Jamaica as slaves. Racial difference proved

                                                                                                               82Scott defines infrapolitics as “an appropriate shorthand to convey the idea that we are dealing with an unobtrusive realm of political struggle . . . the circumspect struggle waged daily by subordinate groups is, like infrared rays, beyond the visible end of the spectrum. That it should be invisible, as we have seen, is in large part by design – a tactical choice born of a prudent awareness of the balance of power.” Scott, 183. 83 Ibid., xiii.

  78  

to be a critical question, because its legitimacy or its illegitimacy was at the center of

post-emancipation reform efforts, including labor and land, for both former slaves and

the Maroons. Ultimately, after concluding that legal distinctions could not exist within

the population in a post-emancipation world, the Jamaican Assembly and planters also

decided that there was in fact no discernible distinction between Maroons and other

Jamaicans of African heritage. Therefore, any distinctions between the two groups in

law also had to be abolished, pursuant to instructions from the CSO’s requirements.

As a result, the Jamaican Assembly, with the approval of the Crown, passed

the Land Allotment Act. This Act was designed to abrogate the former treaty and

some prior statutes concerning the Maroons, including allowing the descendants of the

Trelawney Maroons, the focus of the Second Maroon Wars, to return to Jamaica.

Further, it required that the Jamaican government actively reorganize Maroon lands by

returning their primary ownership to the Crown. The commissioners were required to

reallot Maroon lands in two acre allotments to individual Maroons and one acre

allotments to Maroon descendants. By eliminating Maroon corporate land holdings,

the Jamaican government hoped that Maroons would become part of the larger

“Negroe” population and thus invalidate distinctions between the two groups. This

would allow the British to marshal labor for the plantations that initially created and

sustained Jamaica’s wealth. Jamaica suffered from a labor shortage that both planters

and the government perceived to be aggravated by Blacks having access to land.

Therefore, the colonial government ordered that former slaves have their access to

land curtailed and impeded by creating necessary legislation for the transfer of land. It

  79  

also meant trying to eliminate Maroon corporate land holdings and requiring that only

individuals own land. Without land, the Maroons could not support themselves and

would have to turn to nearby plantations to support themselves.

However, while the Maroons had concerns about their condition in Jamaica,

they did not seek to have their land reallocated. Indeed, they saw anyone who was not

Maroon as an outsider and were content with that status quo. Their particular cultural

and historical legacy, which included the treaty, justified their position. As a result,

they decided, as a community, to ignore the Land Allotment Act and continue to

behave in ways that accorded with Maroon lands held communally. Ignoring

implementation of the Land Allotment Act was the first collective sign of resistance

by the Maroons since the Second Maroon War.

The ability of the Maroons to remain a separate people rooted to ancestral

lands would remain contested from emancipation until the early twentieth century.

Resistance to the Jamaican colonial government’s attempts to both eliminate Maroon

corporate land holdings and Maroon communities by forcing them to merge into the

larger community started when they ignored colonial law. The Accompong Maroons’

resistance to reworking their land became more active with subsequent challenges.

The following chapters detail the events that best reflect Maroon resistance to

reconfiguring their landholdings after 1842.

  80  

Chapter 3: The Cook’s Bottom Land Dispute, Resistance, and the Fallout (1868 – 1905)

In the aftermath of slavery and a declining plantation workforce, in 1836, the

Colonial Secretary advocated policies depriving “negroes” of land so that they would

work on plantations. The Colonial Secretary argued that if there was enough land for

the peasant population to cultivate crops for their subsistence, that there would be “no

sufficient inducement to prefer the more toilsome existence of a regular labourer.”1 To

remedy this problem, “it will be necessary to prevent the occupation of any Crown

lands by persons not possessing a proprietary title to them; and to fix such a price

upon all Crown lands may place them out of the reach of persons without capital.”2

But what was the colonial government to do about the approximately 500 Maroons

who already had title to land and no incentive to work on plantations?

The 1739 treaty had given them differing legal standing from the colony’s

other Black residents. And, in addition to winning freedom well before emancipation,

the Maroons also won a land grant and self-government. The Land Allotment Act was

the government’s attempt to abrogate the treaty and change the Maroons’ particular

legal standing.

For the Jamaican colonial state, beginning in 1868, Cook’s Bottom, a stretch of

land owned by the Crown, presented an opportunity to ensure that the Maroons would

not acquire additional land. The Jamaican government hoped that Maroons who had

no “proprietary title” would be evicted from this portion of Crown lands so that they                                                                                                                1 Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London. 2 Ibid.

  81  

too would become regular laborers. The Maroons then obtained land formerly

belonging to the Trelawney Maroon community directly to the north and west of

Accompong, and the Jamaican colonial government tried to avert its acquisition. It

faced two obstacles in trying to do so.

Figure 3. Undated map of the Accompong and Cook’s Bottom area.3 Cook’s Bottom is the expanse of land located to the north and west of Accompong Town. Judging from this map, the entire of Cook’s Bottom exceeded the acreage of Accompong which totaled 1200 acres.

First, they had called on the Maroons to quell the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion

based on the treaty, a move that underscored the legitimacy of treaty-based land

possessions. Second, the government was explicitly unwilling to use force to make the

Accompong comply with the Land Allotment Act and so it tried to implement the Act

                                                                                                               3 "From a Plan by James Robertson, Containing Elderslea Est. & Ca.," (Kingston, Jamaica: National Library of Jamaica).

  82  

by allowing the Accompong to purchase Cook’s Bottom so long as they would do so

as individuals willing to pay taxes on their portion.4

The Accompong and the Jamaican government worked under differing

assumptions about the laws that would determine the role of Maroons in post-

emancipation Jamaican society. Whether the government looked to the treaty or the

Land Allotment Act had implications for Maroon land ownership and the scope of

Accompong lands. Both sides also grappled with whether the Accompong owned

Cook’s Bottom and the legal basis for such ownership. Yet, the colonial government

still sought to remove “disabilities” from the Accompong by encouraging them to

purchase Cook’s Bottom and pay taxes on it so they did not function as a separate

Black community.

By 1868, the year that the Cook’s Bottom land issue arose, the Jamaican

government aimed to isolate the Accompong on treaty-granted land despite the fact

that the Land Allotment Act was still on the books. Jamaica decided that its goal of

reallocating treaty-granted land from communal to individual ownership had failed,

dooming its attempt to capture Maroon labor.

The Maroons proceeded based on their hidden transcript about the treaty: that

the Accompong rightfully owned land from Falmouth to Black River.5 They resisted

the colonial regime’s drive to deprive Blacks of land by openly using Cook’s Bottom

for an extended period of time (actions that would justify ownership) in a manner that

                                                                                                               4 Unidentified, "Report to the Colonial Secretary About the Accompong's Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 (CSO) 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 5 Colonel Rowe, "June 2, " Letter, 1/B/5/76/33/3 (CSO) 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  83  

comported with their assumption that it was already theirs. Further, in keeping with

the treaty, the Accompong refused to pay taxes. The Colonial Secretary’s Office

directed the Jamaican government not only to refrain from using force, but to avoid

using legal proceedings that would antagonize the Maroon population, so the Jamaican

government had no means of enforcing the change in law.

The government’s attempt to sell the Accompong land that the Maroons

thought belonged to the community, prompted resistance which shifted from a simple

lack of compliance (the Accompong’s response to the Land Allotment Act) to

adversely possessing land, threatening warfare at arrest, and releasing Accompong

prisoners from the Jamaican prison system. The Maroons thereby rejected the Land

Allotment Act, which did not mean that they could declare themselves free from the

implications of that law, namely the dissolution of Jamaica’s Maroon communities

and return of their lands to the Crown. The Cook’s Bottom incident demonstrates an

overarching theme regarding Maroon communities: communities formed in resistance

could only be maintained through acts of resistance. While that initial form was

outright warfare, the Maroons would adapt to differing forms of resistance designed to

ensure that the communities, and the land connected to those communities, remained

as promised under the treaty. Ultimately, the Jamaican government would be stymied

by this persistent show of resistance to the reorganization of Maroons lands and to the

dismantling the Accompong community.

The Shift to Crown Colony Government and its Implications

  84  

Like many of the formerly enslaved across the Caribbean, between 1838 and

1865, Jamaican peasants were disappointed with the terms of their freedom.6 Indeed,

strikes had broken out across the colony, as Black workers demanded better wages and

better hours.7 Governor Sligo personally met with a number of planters with the hopes

of improving workers’ pay and work conditions, and he pressed the former slaves to

see if they would put aside their differences. However, the conditions for Jamaica’s

newly freed Blacks never improved enough so that they thought themselves fully free.

Since 1838, their access to land was limited,8 their wages had seen no significant

improvement, and they were still treated poorly in the criminal justice system.9 These

issues moved the formerly enslaved to demand that they be given “full freedom.”10

After using political channels to try to improve their lot and electing sympathetic

legislators such as William Gordon, meaningful legislative change was thwarted

because Black peasant interests held minority seats on the Assembly. As a result, in

1865, former slaves decided to rebel, an event known as the Morant Bay Rebellion.

From the perception of Jamaica’s Whites, this rebellion became a symbol of the Black

                                                                                                               6 Cooper, Holt, and Scott; Walter Rodney, History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881 - 1905 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Mimi Sheller, Democracy after Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Rebellion in Postemancipation Haiti and Jamaica (London: University Press of Florida, 2001). 7 "The Sligo Papers: An Official View," Jamaica Journal 17, no. 3 (1984); Swithin R. Wilmot, "Emancipation in Action: Workers and Wage Conflict in Jamaica 1838 - 1840," Jamaica Journal 19, no. 3 (1986). 8 Veront Satchell, "'Squatters of Freeholders?' The Case of Jamaican Peasants During the Mid-19th Century," The Journal of Caribbean History 23, no. 2 (1989); Veront Satchell, From Plots to Plantations: Land Transactions in Jamaica, 1866 - 1900 (Mona: University of the West Indies, 1990). Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London. 9 Gad Heuman, "The Killing Time": The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (London: Macmillan, 1994); Holt. 10 See generally Heuman; Holt; Sheller. Heuman, Holt, and Sheller thoroughly discuss the issues that led to the Morant Bay Rebellion.

  85  

peasant’s ability to riot and murder and demonstrated the futility and ineffectiveness

of the post-emancipation project of making former slaves into reliable contract

employees.11

Jamaica’s Maroons were also a part of the Morant Bay story because the

Eastern Maroon groups, notably Mooretown, Charlestown, and Scotts Hall, were

called upon to quell the rebellion. The Accompong, who lived much further west,

were also told to be available to help, particularly if the rebellion spread to the western

part of the island. In order to require the Maroons to help with Morant Bay, the

Jamaican government relied on the Maroons’ duties under treaty, even as it declared

the treaties null and void within twenty-three years of the passing of the Land

Allotment Act. The Maroons fulfilled their treaty obligations by helping quell the

rebellion. The Jamaican government unwittingly put itself in a bind: by relying on the

treaty as the basis for acquiring Maroon help with the Morant Bay Rebellion, they

reinforced its standing as the basis on which they dealt with Maroon communities and

as a result delegitimized the land-holding schemes envisioned in the Land Allotment

Act.

The Maroons’ focus was on keeping the gains they had won during the Maroon

Wars cemented by the treaty sealed with commingled blood.12 Those promises would

need to be kept by both sides. Hence, the Maroons saw their role in the Morant Bay

Rebellion as upholding the treaty. With the resolution of the Morant Bay Rebellion,

the Jamaican government understood that “[t]here are good reasons for believing that                                                                                                                11 Holt. 12 Bilby; Kopytoff.

  86  

since the events of October 1865 the Maroons of this island have labored under the

erroneous impression that they have reacquired the special privileges which they once

enjoyed.”13 Nevertheless, there was a significant reworking of Jamaica’s governing

apparatus in the wake of the rebellion, and that had an impact on the government’s

relationship with the Accompong.

In 1866, as a result of this rebellion, Crown Colony government was

established for Jamaica: a government with a nominated Council consisting of six

officials and three unofficial members and the abolition of the two hundred-year-old

House of Assembly.14 This new government could keep or dismiss laws on its books

at will, and its creation meant that if someone wanted to serve on the Legislative

Council, their interests would have to be aligned with the Crown itself. Ultimately,

this structure of government reinforced the power of Jamaica’s White population

throughout the island and actively discouraged Black political participation, as in the

minds of White Jamaicans, events such as the Morant Bay Rebellion were the direct

result of Black political participation.15 Whites continued to maintain political and

social authority by the government placing the “coercive levers of power . . . under

their control.”16 Whites still remained at the top of Jamaica’s social structure; only

Whites could, for example, hold top jobs in Governor Grant’s administration.17 While

this approach to governance would certainly have implications for Jamaica’s Maroons                                                                                                                13 Major Inspector General J. H. Prederville, "Letter to a Constabulary Office, 4 August, 1868," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 14 Heuman, 159. 15Ibid. 16Ibid. 17 Patrick Bryan, The Jamaican People, 1882 - 1902: Race, Class and Social Control (London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1991), 12.

  87  

because certain legal assumptions about the Maroons remained in place, including that

the Land Allotment Act would remain the basis of dealing with the Maroons.

The Jamaican Government’s Basis for Claiming Cook’s Bottom

In 1868, following the Morant Bay Rebellion and after the Crown had

established Crown Colony government, the Accompong Maroons sent a request to the

government to survey Accompong and hoped it would include Cook’s Bottom.

Thomas Harrison conducted the survey of these Crown Lands; however, he was aware

that the Accompong could make a claim for owning the Cook’s Bottom.18 The

Maroons had received good news: that the government’s assumption that they held

1,000 acres was faulty and that they actually owned 1,220 acres as a community, not

including Cook’s Bottom. Given that the Accompong sought to add Cook’s Bottom to

their land-holdings, they interfered with his survey when it was apparent that Cook’s

Bottom was not in the offing.19

In July 1869, Officer Prederville arrested two Maroons and charged them with

larceny. Maroons had planted vegetables on Cook’s Bottom and when they harvested

them from Crown lands, the government had accused them of larceny (taking someone

else’s property with the intent of depriving the owner of its use).20

The core of the Jamaican government’s and the Maroons’ contrary claims

concerning Cook’s Bottom depends on interpretations of what happened to treaty-

granted land after the Trelawney Maroons were deported. The government claimed

                                                                                                               18 Government Surveyor Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 19 Ibid. 20 Law Dictionary, s.v. "Larceny."

  88  

that they were the rightful owners of Cook’s Bottom after the Trelawney Maroons

were deported, their land reverted to the Crown.21 Further, even if this was not the

case, the Accompong, according to the Jamaican laws, were actually recognized as a

Maroon community by statute and not part of the treaty-land grant: in 1758, the

Jamaica Assembly allotted 1000 acres to Colonel Accompong and his people and their

land grant had nothing to do with the treaty.22

Their 1500 acres of land was forfeited to the Crown, a portion was under 36 George III Cap 33 sold out to private parties and 400 acres was retained for the use of His Majesty’s troops. – This 400 acres was subsequently transferred to the local Government by 25 Victoria Cap 4 and is at present held under lease from the Government.23

Furthermore, even if the Accompong received the legacy of the Trelawney

Maroons, the Land Allotment Act was a significant intervening legal event concerning

all of Jamaica’s Maroons, because it abrogated the treaties and all prior laws dealing

with the Maroons. It ordered that the land be redistributed and that Maroons had the

“rights and privileges of all of the other Queen’s subjects.”24 Ultimately, for the

Jamaican government, even if the Accompong held treaty-granted land, the Land

                                                                                                               21 Colin Liddell, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary, 24 July, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 22 "An Act to Ascertain and Establish the Boundaries of Trelawney Town, and to Settle and Allot One Thousand Acres of Land for Accompong's Town, and to Ascertain the Boundaries Thereof.," in The Laws of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1758). 23 Archibald Cooper, "Conversation on New Year's Eve with Capt. Holliday, December, 31, " Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica; Colin Liddell, "Letter to the Surveyor General's Office, July 24, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. The Archibald Cooper conversation also highlights the long-held belief by the Accompong that they were the inheritors of the Trelawney Maroons. Both documents reinforce the notion that the Jamaican government had always believed that when the Trelawney rebelled again, they forfeited their rights to that treaty-granted land and it reverted to the Jamaican government. As a result, the Accompong could assert no ownership rights over that property. 24 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842).

  89  

Allotment Act changed the nature of all Maroon land holdings, the Trelawney and

Accompong Maroons included.

While the government denied any historical connection the Accompong had to

Cook’s Bottom, they were concerned that Maroons had won proper title to it through

adverse possession. Adverse possession is defined as “a method of acquiring complete

title to land as against all others, including the record owner, through certain acts over

an uninterrupted period of time, as prescribed by statute. It is usually prescribed that

such possession must be actual, visible, open, notorious, hostile, under claim of right,

definite, continuous, exclusive, etc.”25 The purpose of such requirements is to give

notice that the possession of a parcel of land is subordinate to the claim of others.

The Jamaican government presumed that Maroon use of all lands outside of

the treaty-granted lands was adversely possessed and that the Maroons had no legal

title. While they never directly used the term “adverse possession,” the way that they

discussed the use of lands bordering Accompong, Cook’s Bottom included, implied a

hostile usage that would be congruent with the term. The Jamaican government’s

argument that the Accompong were adversely possessing land that did not belong to

the community is made in two related ways: first by a discussion of what was disputed

and claimed by the Accompong, second by a discussion of the Accompong’s usage of

land.

One term government officials used to reveal what the Accompong claimed is

“disputed title.” British government officials evaluated the Jamaican government’s

                                                                                                               25 Steven H. Gifis, "Adverse Possession," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984).

  90  

attempts to diffuse the dispute about Cook’s Bottom and argued that the larceny

charge that Major Prederville brought against two Maroons did not help the situation.

In fact, the British admonished, if this was really an issue concerning disputed land

title, the matter would best be handled in civil, not criminal courts.26 The Colonial

Secretary’s Office acknowledged that the Accompong had a legitimate claim to

Cook’s Bottom without agreeing to it. The British then encouraged the Jamaican

government to sort out the underlying disagreement about land and not to use the

criminal process to further obscure this problem because “complainants on such cases

are constantly endeavouring to get such cases taken up on the criminal side & very

often succeed in this abusing the law.”27 The CSO advanced using the rule of law to

create solutions with the Accompong. The criminal courts were never the proper

framework for resolving land issues and the Jamaican government needed to adjust its

actions accordingly. Nevertheless, the British could acknowledge that there were

competing and incompatible claims based on disputed title for Cook’s Bottom by both

the Jamaican government and the Accompong.

The term “claim” is also one that the Jamaican government used to describe

this dispute term with a very specific meaning in the legal context: an “assertion of a

right to something” which could be money or property.28 Claim in this context does

not mean or imply actual possession or ownership: all the Jamaican government

                                                                                                               26 Colonial Secretary, "Letter from Cso to Prederville, July, 1868," Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Explains the Cso's Position Regarding How to Deal with the Accompong, " 1B57635 (CS0) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 27 Secretary, "Letter from Cso to Prederville, July, 1868," Spanish Town, Jamaica. 28 "Claim," in Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; reprint, 2nd Edition); Steven H. Gifis, "Claim," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984).

  91  

conceded was that the Maroons are “asserting their rights” to Cook’s Bottom. The

Jamaican government made claims about the Cook’s Bottom land as well, namely that

it belongs to the Crown: “The Maroons also claimed a large tract of land to the West

and north of their own land which remains still unpatented and is the property of the

Crown . . .”29 As this sentence demonstrates, claims, in the legal realm, are inherently

hostile because while one party may make one claim, at least one other will make

contrary claims about a piece of property, be it real (land) or personal (thing) property.

After discussing claims and disputed titles as a way to describe the legal

challenges they faced concerning Cook’s Bottom, the Jamaican government then used

language that described the Accompong’s use of land, which further suggested that

they saw adverse possession as a way the Accompong were trying to gain legal title

over Cook’s Bottom. The first terms they used to describe the Accompong’s use of the

land were “occupation” and “possession.” Occupying land means taking possession of

it for personal use.30 The definition of possession is even stronger as it is defined as,

“dominion and control over property.”31 The Accompong signaled their control over

it, they did not hide their use of it regardless of whether someone else owned it, while

the government let the land go idle. The government observed some of these uses and

even explained why the Accompong might be doing this, arguing that both Cook’s

Bottom and Accompong were in “cockpit land,” which was clayey, poor, inaccessible,

                                                                                                               29Kelley; Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. See also Alfred Cork, "Precis Re Accompong Maroon Land, May 26, 1894," 1B576333 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 30 "Occupy," in Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 31 Steven H. Gifis, "Possession," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984).

  92  

and made the land very swampy. The Maroons consequently “scattered wildly to

obtain the detached cultivable places.”32 Hence, the Accompong had converted the

property to their own use to cultivate crops to support the community. They had done

this for an extended period of time, from the late 1860s through the 1890s, an

uninterrupted period of time in an open, hostile manner (in that they did not seek

permission from the Jamaican government to use these lands). While the government

never acknowledged that the Accompong had a claim of right to Cook’s Bottom, the

Accompong challenged that conclusion, based on their long history of using the land.

The government’s concern with the Maroons’ use and possession of the property

belied their concern about losing Cook’s Bottom through adverse possession.33

The government worried that the Accompong adversely possessing Cook’s

Bottom would undermine their ability to implement the Land Allotment Act. When

the statute declared that the Maroons would now be treated the same as all of the

Queen’s subjects, the government anticipated that the Maroons would have much less

land and own it individually rather than communally. However, the Colonial Secretary

warned the Governors of the challenges of adverse possession for “[i]n many cases

serious difficulties will occur in securing unsold lands for the future from the intrusion

                                                                                                               32 Cork, "Precis Re Accompong Maroon Land, May 26, 1894," 1B576333 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 33 At this point, because of the Land Allotment Act, there are no lands that the Accompong technically own. However, the government would not argue that the Accompong adversely possessed their town, the history of the treaty makes that a false conclusion. However, their inability to force the Accompong to reallocate their lands is reflects that the government cannot walk away from the treaty as reflected by calling the Maroons to defend the island during the Morant Bay Rebellion.

  93  

of usurpers and squatters.”34 The Jamaican government viewed the Accompong as a

“usurper and squatter.”

The Accompong’s Basis for Claiming Cook’s Bottom

The Accompong made two types of arguments for Cook’s Bottom: that the

written treaty had erroneously recorded their actual borders and one based on their true

relationship with the Trelawney Maroons. They developed, in contradiction with the

Jamaican government’s goals, a consistent objective of reclaiming treaty lands.

Accompong Maroon oral history argues that the very boundaries of Accompong were

suspect at the point the treaty was signed. They asserted that the British had agreed to

give them not 1,000 acres, as the Jamaican government insisted, but 10,000 acres of

land for their use. “The British” took advantage of Cudjoe because he could not read

and so the treaty that the government had memorialized in their laws records one-tenth

of the land to which the Accompong were entitled.35 If the Accompong had their full

complement of land, they would inhabit Jamaica from Falmouth in the Northwest of

the island down to Savanna-La-Mar on the southwest coast. Not only were the

boundaries of Accompong lands problematic, any legislative attempt to reallocate

those lands according to the Land Allotment Act was also suspect. As a result, the

Accompong and the other Maroon groups ignored the Act and kept their lands in

common. Once the British gave the Maroons their lands, it was up to the Maroons to

decide what to do with them, subject to any limitations placed on that land by the

                                                                                                               34 Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London. 35 Besson; Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008). See also Zips.

  94  

treaty.36 This effort to acquire Cook’s Bottom was designed to restore the Maroon

understanding of their boundaries of their lands under the treaty and is their first act of

resistance in the post-emancipation period.

The Accompong also made their claim to Cook’s Bottom based on their

relationship to the Trelawney. Their description of this relationship contrasts with the

government’s and served to undermine a claim of adverse possession. The

Accompong claimed a close affinity with the Trelawney Maroons and their lands

based on the treaty, arguing that the Trelawney and the Accompong were the same

people. That Accompong and Cudjoe (of Trelawney) were brothers was evidence that

the communities started from the same blood.37 A close reading of the treaty supports

the Accompong’s viewpoint about their connection to the Trelawney Maroons. One

term of the treaty is that “Captain Cudjoe shall, during his life, be Chief Commander

in Trelawney town, after his decease the command to devolve on his brother Captain

Accompong; and in case of his decease, on his next brother Captain Johnny . . .”38 As a

                                                                                                               36 Limitations were placed on how the Maroons could use their land including treaty stipulations that they were allowed to plant coffee, cocoa, ginger, tobacco, and cotton. The Maroons were permitted to breed cattle, hogs, goats, or any other stock. They had to live within the boundaries of the towns that were established by the treaty and they could not hunt within three miles of any settlement, crawl, or pen. "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 37 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). Harris Cawley was a former (and perhaps current) Colonel of the Accompong Maroons. Any Maroon political leader is expected to have great knowledge about Maroon oral history in order to serve in this position. 38 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).

  95  

result, because they are from the same community as explicitly acknowledged under

the treaty, they would also be entitled to the Trelawney’s treaty granted lands, Jamaica

never had the right to pull those lands from the Trelawney and make them, once again,

Crown Lands.39

Accompong Resistance to Relinquishing Cook’s Bottom

According to the Accompong, they actually owned Cook’s Bottom. Given the

lack of agreement between the Accompong and the Jamaican government concerning

the expanse of Accompong’s land, the Accompong requested the survey hoping that

the government would finally legitimize their expanded claim for land. When it

became clear to them that it would not confirm additional land for the community,

once started, they stopped the survey as a second form of resistance the Accompong

used during the dispute over Cook’s Bottom. Generally, the government had only seen

two forms of resistance from this community: outright warfare, which ended with the

treaty, and ignoring the legal actions the government was taking as it applied to their

land and community, namely the Land Allotment Act. Thwarting Harrison’s

completion of the survey broke with their silent resistance to the Land Allotment Act.

The record does not supply details about how specifically they prevented the survey

from continuing, but one can imagine Maroon political leaders requesting that Mr.

Harrison leave their community or Maroons taking his equipment to conduct the                                                                                                                39 Cooper wrote that “[t]he 1500 acres the Maroons claim they say they should have because they are part of the descendants of Capt. Cudjoe of Trelawney. The Government maintains that the 1500 Trelawney acres does not apply to Accompony [sic], that the Accompong Maroons got only 1000 acres and that even if the Accompong people might be considered heirs under the Trelawney Treaty, that treaty was later completely invalidated by the rebellion of the Trelawney Maroons.”Cooper, "Conversation on New Year's Eve with Capt. Holliday, December, 31, " Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica.

  96  

survey until he promised to leave; or other non-violent actions. Stopping the survey is

one example of what Robin D.G. Kelley calls the “margins of struggle.” He argues

that whether these struggles are “spontaneous battles with authority or social

movements thought to be inauthentic or unrepresentative of the ‘communities

interests,’ are really a fundamental part of the larger story waiting to be told.”40

Stopping the survey was one such spontaneous battle with the Jamaican government

that is part of the larger story of how the Accompong managed to ensure that their

land holdings and community would not be undermined. Individuals, no matter who

they represented, who failed to incorporate the larger boundaries of Accompong were

persona non grata. Controlling Cook’s Bottom by growing community foodstuffs was

a third act of resistance. Hence, the land the Accompong demanded was not perceived

as belonging to the government, but was instead stolen. The Accompong did not claim

adverse possession. Their defiant message was ultimately “get off of our lands.” Even

the Jamaican government had to concede that perhaps it would make more sense to

legalize the Accompong’s “illegal” possession of Crown Lands. Mr. Harrison

suggested this possibility in his letter to Mr. Mann saying “If it is deemed advisable to

extend the limits of their land, the only thing that can be done for them, is to make

lawful their present unlawful occupation of the Crown land.”41 This sentiment is

echoed by J.B. Mann, a police officer, stating that “[i]f it should be thought desirable

to renew the endeavours to legalize the holdings, and also to require these Maroons to

                                                                                                               40 Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1996). 41 Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  97  

pay taxes as the Maroons of other settlements do, I would suggest that the strict

boundaries of the Accompong settlement should not be adhered to, but that grants

should be given to those Maroons also who have settled on a part of the unpatented

land on the west and north.”42 Whether there was agreement between the Jamaican

government and the Accompong to do this is another issue; however, the Accompong

made a case for ensuring that Cook’s Bottom belonged to them in the long-term.

No matter the government’s aspirations for implementing the Land Allotment

Act, by 1868, all Jamaica’s Maroons still failed to comply with the Act or quietly

accept the government’s desire to limit further land acquisition. Colonel Mann, a

police officer, openly acknowledged that “[i]t seems however that none of the

Maroons have any title to the lands they occupy, as they have neglected to apply for

and obtain grants within the time limited by the 19th Vic: ch:25. That Act was the last

of a series of attempts made to put the holdings of the Maroons on a legal footing.”43

The challenge the government faced with the Accompong failing to abide by

the law came to a head in June 1868, when the Jamaican police force arrested two

Maroons for larceny. The government alleged that they grew vegetables on someone

else’s land and arrested them for taking vegetables from another’s property. By July

1868, the Accompong engaged in a fourth form of resistance and “rescued” the

arrested Maroons without permission or legal authority.44

                                                                                                               42 J.B. Mann, "Letter to Dr. , December 19, 1868," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 43 Ibid. 44 Inspector General J.H. Prederville Major, "Letter to Hpad Quar Constabulary Office, 4 August, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  98  

Even before the arresting police officer took the prisoners from Accompong,

the Maroons had spontaneously organized in the face of the Jamaican government

arresting their own people. Inspector Wheatle, a police officer that dealt with the

Accompong, writes that “after apprehending Maria Ball and Alex Salmon [the two

Maroons charged with larceny] about 100 persons congregated on the Parade and that

Mr. Salmon and Thomas Cross [members of the Accompong community] refused to

allow the Police to take the prisoners out of the Township.”45 A subsequent letter

reveals that Maroons said that removing members of their community would result in

bloodshed, a threat that the Colonel, the political leader of the Accompong

community, supported.46

Trying to prevent the arrested Maroons from being removed from Accompong

cannot be seen independently of another act of resistance, namely, releasing the

Maroons in custody from jail. Both preventing arrest and releasing prisoners were a

direct challenge to the penal authority of the Jamaican government. The Accompong

felt comfortable with this action, because arresting and punishing Maroons by non-

Maroons was in direct contravention of the 1739 treaty between “the British” and the

Maroon communities. Specifically, the treaty states that “[t]hat Captain Cudjoe, during

his life, and the Captains succeeding him, shall have full power to inflect [sic] any

punishment they think proper for crimes committed by their men among themselves

                                                                                                               45 Inspector Thomas K. Wheatle, "Letter Concerning Arresting the Maroons, July 6, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 46 Major Inspector General J. H. Prederville, "Letter to Headquarters Constabulary Office, 29 December, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica; Inspector Thomas K. Wheatle, "Letter to Two Mile Wood Police Station, 4 July, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  99  

(death only excepted) in which case, if the Captain thinks they deserve death, he shall

be obliged to bring them before any Justice of the Peace, who shall order proceedings

on their trial equal to those of other free negroes.”47 In releasing fellow community

members from jail, the Maroons not only snubbed the Jamaican government’s

authority, but also rejected the very rule of law the Jamaican government sought to

enact. With this action, the Maroons patently rejected the authority of the Land

Allotment Act in favor of the unchanging relationship between “the British” and the

Maroons as specifically detailed in the treaty, sealed by an exchange of blood. As

such, they asserted their authority as sovereigns throughout this exchange.

Ultimately, while the Jamaican government was determined to continue

enforcing the land regime imposed by the Land Allotment Act, the Accompong clearly

had another agenda that frustrated its implementation. The Cook’s Bottom incident

was one example of this alternate agenda. Resistance was a means of ensuring that the

Maroons’ agenda would be implemented, although the Accompong did not necessarily

win everything they thought they were entitled to.

How to Manage the Maroons

With the threat of bloodshed that accompanied the Maroon release of their

prisoners from jail came other concerns from the Jamaican Governor’s office. The

Governor was concerned about how the police force managed this issue with the

                                                                                                               47 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).

  100  

Maroons. Jamaican government correspondence with the police revealed a divide

between the police who saw the Maroons’ actions as criminal and the Governor, who

was more concerned about Jamaica’s internal security. “Memories” of the Maroon

Wars had not faded from the minds of the Queen’s officials nearly one hundred years

after the deportation of the Trelawney Maroons.

Both the police and the Governor’s office agreed that the Maroons misread

their rights, they were entitled only to what other British subjects received. However,

the gulf between the police and the Governor’s office became an issue of how to

reinforce the Maroons’ new position within the Jamaican colonial state. According to

the Governor’s office, the Maroons should have their rights explained to them in “a

kindly and considerate manner . . .”48 The representative from the Governor’s office

went on to write that this dispute arose from a confusion about title to property and

not, ultimately, a criminal case. He concluded that when officials resorted to the

criminal law system, that whatever came from that process “may . . . endanger the

peace of the country,”49 reminding the police force that their dealings with the

Maroons could threaten peace. Given the close proximity in time of the Second

Maroon Wars, the Governor was likely concerned about renewed war, hence, the

threat to Jamaica’s security. However, the Jamaican government would have to use

force to try implementing the new public transcript, the Land Allotment Act, and this

fear restricted their dealings with the Accompong.

                                                                                                               48 Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, "July 11, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 49 Ibid.

  101  

The Jamaican government also understood the risk the island faced if they

forced the Maroons to take actions that contravened the treaty. The letter argued that

the use of the criminal law process “very often succeed[ed] in abusing the law.”50

Finally, in a later letter concerning taxing Maroon lands, the Jamaican government

considered how its actions could pose a challenge in their relationship with the

Accompong. An employee wrote that “these lands [treaty granted lands] ought not to

be made liable to a tax by way of or on the cultivation of produce from them: at least it

would not be wise policy to attempt to enforce it as the amount to be derived would

not compensate for the irritation consequent thereon.”51 Yet a third correspondence

pointed to the fact that the Accompong “are a peculiarly sensitive and irritable people”

and noted their “ignorant and excitable temperament.”52 Given the proximity in time

both to the Morant Bay Rebellion and the Second Maroon Wars, the Jamaican

government’s institutional memory of the potential of Black peasant rebellion was

primary in their dealings with the Accompong and other Maroon groups. Preventing

rebellion was their central goal and actions that led to rebellion were to be

discouraged, including using the criminal process with Maroons and overreaching

with taxation policies.

Convincing the Accompong to Comply With the Land Allotment Act

Ultimately, the Maroons did not abide by Jamaica’s laws, the Land Allotment

Act was just the start because the Accompong also ran afoul of criminal laws.

                                                                                                               50 Secretary, "Letter from Cso to Prederville, July, 1868," Spanish Town, Jamaica. 51 R.W. Smith, "Letter to Mr. French, May 30, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 52 D.T.T., "Minute in Government Files, November 29, 1870," 1B57635 (CS0)2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  102  

Nevertheless, the Jamaican government still embraced the Land Allotment Act and

hoped to eliminate the Maroon communities by allotting community lands to

individuals. J.H. Prederville, a police officer located nearby the Accompong

community, argued that by ensuring that the Accompong owned their land on an

individual basis (in accordance with the goal of the Land Allotment Act), they would

“be gradually weaned from communism of lands, become more amenable to the laws,

and finally lose the distinctive attributes of class to which they now cling to

pertinaciously.”53 They would finally become “negroes.”

In 1868, Prederville met with the Maroons and discussed the laws he was

concerned about stating that the Accompong needed “a proper understanding of the

necessity that exists of making some alteration in their present mode of managing their

lands, viz., all having an equal right to cultivate it how, and when, and where, and in

what manner they please, without fence, division, or boundary, or any description

whatever.”54 The Accompong had started by breaching the Land Allotment Act, yet

had no different rights from the rest of the Queen’s subject and so they could not be

“exempted from the ordinary process of the law.”55 When they wrongfully freed the

two arrested Maroons, they should have not have been given any deference,

particularly because the reason for their arrest, in his opinion, had nothing to do with

land and everything to do with the Maroons complying with the rule of law, a

                                                                                                               53 J. H. Prederville, "Letter to Headquarters Constabulary Office, 29 December, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid.

  103  

conclusion at odds with the Colonial Secretary and one that was in line with police

treatment of all “negroes.”56

The government had another political issue with the Accompong, namely the

Maroon’s reliance on their internal political structure, and so the government

trivialized the political and military distinctions within the Accompong community.

Maroons were now merged into the larger population and did not need their own

military leaders. In 1868, in one of the first signs that the government was prepared to

deny the continuing existence of the Maroon communities, Prederville wrote about his

visit in Accompong:

I called on the Chief, “Colonel” Rowe they still preserve the military gradations of rank conceded to “Captain” Cudjoe and the rest of his officers by the articles of Pacification concluded with the Maroons in the year of 1739 and having informed him that I had a communication to make to them on the part of the Government, he immediately ordered a meeting of his people or tribe, and after “Major” Foster and “Captains” Wright and McLeod were introduced . . .”57

Two particular points stand out in this paragraph. One rarely sees military appellations

written between quotation marks. Secondly, three terms in the paragraph demand

closer examination: “Chief”, “people,” and “tribe.” Placing the military appellations

such as Colonel and Captain between quotes suggests that they are not really military

leaders, indeed, not even Captain Cudjoe could be regarded as a real military leader.

The British never thought that the Maroons were fighting a real war, they were

fighting a guerilla war in which they would not come out in the open and tackle their

                                                                                                               56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. Italics are mine.

  104  

British opponents.58 Hence, Captain Cudjoe who commanded his troops to fight a

guerilla war demonstrated so much cowardice that he could not really be a Captain. By

the 1870s, the Accompong were not fighting a war, and Prederville saw no need for

Maroon military leaders. Further, Mr. Prederville referred to the Accompong as

having a political leader called a “chief.” He calls them a “people” and suggests that

their primary point of political organization is a “tribe.” When Prederville refers to the

Accompong as a “tribe” he diminishes them as a sovereign people. Naming the

political leader of the Accompong a “Chief” also denies the leader military potency.

Ultimately, his letter suggested that there was no longer a separate political and

military entity living within Jamaica’s borders and so the need to recognize them

according to such appellations was no longer necessary. Because of the effect of the

Land Allotment Act, the Maroon communities were no longer worth being spoken of

as separate entities, Maroons were like other Blacks who were the Crown’s subjects.

As the challenges of settling Cook’s Bottom extended well beyond the initial

1868 incident, the government denied that Maroon communities existed and treated

them as historical artifacts. Thirty years later, in a government report sent to the

Colonial Secretary’s Office, an employee wrote that there were no Maroons at all.

Over time, they had “intermixed with, and are no different to, the ordinary population .

. . I have no doubt that in course of time these people will entirely lose, or forget their

claim to distinctiveness if it is not injudiciously kept alive.”59 The Land Allotment Act

                                                                                                               58 See generally Edwards. 59 Unidentified, "Report to the Colonial Secretary About the Accompong's Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 (CSO) 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  105  

justified the government’s decision to ignore the community and it hoped that the rule

of law would dictate the reality for all involved.

In addition to the political “rights and privileges” the Maroons had gained, the

Maroons were also entitled to receive government services, a means of increasing the

incentive for the Accompong to pay taxes. The government hoped they would pay

taxes if it provided passable roads, medical aid, a poor house for the indigent, and a

school. The Colonial Secretary asked the tax office whether money was allocated for

roads surrounding Accompong, and the tax office acknowledged that such an

allocation had never been made.60

However, the government’s provision of services was contingent upon the

Accompong paying taxes. The government insisted that, “they [the Maroons] became

liable in the enjoyment of those privileges [government services] to pay any new taxes

which the Queen & Government might impose on all classes without distinction”

pursuant to the Land Allotment Act.61 Like other Jamaican residents, the Maroons

“should therefore contribute to the Revenue of the Country by paying their taxes like

other people, when, of course, they would be entitled to participate in all the

advantages desirable from Governmental or parochial [sources].”62 Providing Maroons

with particular services served as concrete evidence that they were being treated like

all other Jamaicans and were a way of diminishing the Maroons perceived differences

                                                                                                               60 Unidentified, "Letter from the Collector of Taxes Office, November 13, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 61 Unidentified, "Report About Jamaica's Maroons, " 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 62 Unidentified, "Report About the Scots Hall and Accompong Maroons Connected to Paying Taxes, December 2, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  106  

between themselves and the rest of the colonial population. However, full success in

providing government services was not realized by the Jamaican government because

the Maroons never complied with paying taxes. However, such a strategy was doomed

to failure; the Accompong saw its whole existence as justified by its founding legal

document – the 1739 treaty and remained determined to pursue its own agenda.

The Accompong: a Taxing Challenge

The Jamaican government was in a conundrum: it wanted to enforce the rule of

law, and ensure that the Land Allotment Act had taken hold, but could not force the

Accompong to change their landholdings and ultimately become laborers. Facing a

kind of stalemate, the Jamaican government decided instead to use the Accompong’s

land as a means of capturing revenue. While the government thought this to be merely

one benefit of having the “rights and privileges of the Queen’s subjects,”63 the

Maroons challenged the notion that they should be taxed at all.

The Jamaican government had to devise a way to gain revenue from the

Maroon lands. The obvious starting point, for the government, was treaty-granted

lands. However, given that the government had already acknowledged the failure of

the Land Allotment Act as the Accompong refused to avail “themselves of the

opportunity of getting their allotments of land in fee, as was required by these laws . .

.” they had to find other ways of encouraging the Accompong to behave like the

                                                                                                               63 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842).

  107  

“Queen’s subjects.”64 This contradiction was never resolved and reinforced the

Accompong claim to treaty-granted land. The government theoretically owned

Accompong land, but never took action to consolidate its ownership, so the

community remained. Maroons continued to keep their homes, plant agriculture

(regardless of the fallow state of the land acknowledged by both the government and

the Accompong), build schools, and keep their church in clear Accompong control. As

a result, the Jamaican government continued to treat the land as had been done by

custom and practice since long before the 1842 Land Allotment Act. They treated the

land, in other words, as treaty-granted land, and the Accompong remained as before

the Land Allotment Act, communal owners.

As the government reconsidered its policy about taxing the Accompong, it had

to find legal authority to justify taxing the Maroons. Ironically, the legal problem was

framed as whether there was legal authority to justify Maroons’ exemption from

taxation. Yet another irony was that the Land Allotment Act was the legal framework

used to make sense of the lack of a taxation scheme for the Maroons.

From a review of the several laws I do not find that the Maroon lands at Accompong or the beasts of the Maroons carrying commodities, were ever specially exempted from payment of taxes – and I am of opinion that if any such privileges were ever granted with the lands they have ceased by the reverting of the lands in the Crown.65

The Jamaican government consistently acknowledged a problematic past

concerning taxation. While there was no explicit legal authority stating that the

                                                                                                               64 Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 65 J.R. Fgbe, "Rights and Privileges of the Marons, undated, " 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  108  

Maroons should not pay taxes, clearly by practice, they had not. However, with the

passing of the Act, the Accompong (as well as the other Maroon groups) became

“liable in the enjoyment of these privileges to pay any new taxes which the Queen &

Government might impose on all classes without distinction.”66 Another problem

presented itself to the government: the law that created responsibility for the Maroons

to pay taxes also took from the Maroon communities lands that would be a source of

taxable revenue from the Maroon communities. Hence, treaty lands should not have

been a source of revenue. The government decided they would leave Accompong

lands with the Accompong, no longer assume the Crown owned these, and seek the

land tax revenue. These contradictions point to weakness the government faced in

relying on the rule of law to restructure and assimilate Maroon communities into the

greater Jamaican population; the Maroons never recognized the authority of the new

laws over their lands and communities. The government’s agenda was thwarted before

it began.

The government’s agenda was thwarted in part because of resistance, and in

part, because the challenges that custom and practice posed in framing the rule of law,

i.e. the way parties interacted over the past, including the rights, privileges, and

responsibilities that parties acknowledged or failed to acknowledge with each other

create or destroy rights. In a sense, this was the challenge with squatters and adverse

possession in post-emancipation Jamaica. Once Black peasants, whether Maroons or

the formerly enslaved, made a claim based on practice or custom with regard to the                                                                                                                66 Unidentified, "Report About the Scots Hall and Accompong Maroons Connected to Paying Taxes, December 2, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  109  

use of a particular parcel of land, they could change the law by forcing title to be

granted to them. The law of adverse possession simply formalized this customary

relationship. The challenge posed by custom thwarted the core proposition of

extracting land revenue from the Maroon communities.

As a result, the Jamaican government acknowledged the monumental failure of

realloting treaty-granted lands and their failure in collecting taxes from the Maroons

for those lands. Ultimately they acknowledged that because of custom, they could not

start collecting taxes on treaty-granted lands, affecting their reading of other sources of

law, namely the 1739 treaty.

Potential Resolution to the Cook’s Bottom Land Issue

By 1895, the government still had to resolve the Cook’s Bottom land dispute

with the Accompong. The government developed a two-part plan to do so. The first

part of the plan allowed the Accompong to use Cook’s Bottom, but they hoped that

over time, the Accompong would be amenable to the second part of the plan:

individual Maroons buying separate parcels of Cook’s Bottom and paying taxes on

those parcels. The first part of the plan, allowing the Accompong to use the land,

created more challenges than expected because the Accompong also trespassed on

other lands. By the 1890s, the government received complaints from residents near the

property about the Accompong crossing the boundaries of their land. The government

wondered aloud why this was a problem because

there was a tacit understanding that the maroons should be allowed to occupy these lands. It appears to me that this understanding dates back to the time when Mr. Harrison made his survey of Accompong and found the maroons outside of the limits

  110  

of that place and occupying unpatented land. Such occupation must then, as subsequently, apparently have been recognized since nothing was done to disturb it, and in a private letter written by Mr. Harrison, he remarks that Sir John Grant gave the maroons permission to occupy the unpatented land to the North of Accompong.67 With this government land, the Accompong had enough to live on and support their

community and they should not have been using other peoples’ property.68

Ultimately, the government allowed the Accompong to use Crown Lands with

permission of the Jamaican government. The Accompong’s adverse possession claims

were no longer hostile. However, allowing use also provided little incentive to the

Accompong to acquire Cook’s Bottom in any other way, and permissible use proved

to be a favorable resolution for the Accompong themselves. They won the use that

they wanted and effectively controlled land that they thought was theirs in the first

place.

Additionally, Accompong use of the land compromised the government’s

objectives into the future. The government had now developed a custom of Maroon

land use and exclusive control over Cook’s Bottom, allowing the Accompong to reject

any terms for purchasing Cook’s Bottom and set an uncomfortable precedent for

expanding Accompong land holdings. As long as the Accompong could get either the

Crown or private land holders to permit use of the property at their discretion, they

effectively owned the parcels they used. This approach likely justified Accompong

trespasses on lands surrounding Cook’s Bottom in the 1890s.

                                                                                                               67 Colin Liddell, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, July 16, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 68 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary, May 28, 1894," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  111  

Nevertheless, the Jamaican government persisted in discussing the terms by

which they were going to collect taxes from Cook’s Bottom. The government

continued to emphasize to its employees that they would not tax the treaty-granted

lands or lands such as Cook’s Bottom that the Crown owned. “[T]axes should not be

collected herein on the unpatented land outside the 1220 acres as the Maroons have

been permitted to occupy it at will.”69 This two-pronged solution complied with the

requirements of the Land Allotment Act.

First, the Maroons would actually hold any land purchased in the future as

individuals rather than communally. The police officer who had dealt with the

Accompong when he arrested two community members for larceny first made this

recommendation, stating that “about six hundred acres of a better description of

Crown Lands on the west, be now allocated or sold to them for a nominal amount,

with a proviso that each allotment or separate tenure should be fenced in . . .”70 The

requirement that the Accompong eventually acquire the land in severalty was also

repeated again in the 1890s.71 Even the Scottish Presbytery, the Church that had built a

chapel in Accompong and often acted as an intermediary between the Jamaican

government and the Accompong community supported this plan stating that “a certain

                                                                                                               69 Unidentified, "Taxation and Accompong Lands, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 70 J. H. Prederville, "Letter to Headquarters Constabulary Office, 29 December, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 71 The Honorable Salmon, "Letter Suggesting the Accompong Buy Cooks Bottom, " 1B57635 CS0 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  112  

number of acres should be allotted to every head of a family on payment of a certain

small security . . .”72

Second, the Accompong would have to live up to their “rights and

responsibilities of British subjects” because they would finally be paying taxes on

their new lots.73 But, the government did not want to stop there. Indeed, they hoped

that the power of taxation would extend beyond Maroon land holdings to their stock,

which included the “beasts of Maroons carrying commodities.”74

Tax revenues in Jamaica had started dropping precipitously since emancipation

because planters who owned slaves had provided a stream of revenue for the colonial

state.75 The loss of slaves meant a loss of labor for the sugar plantations as the

formerly enslaved sought to acquire their own plots of land and support their families

in that manner. Further, no other industry arose to replace the sugar industry until the

turn of the twentieth century, when the fruit export industry established a foothold.76

The Jamaican government was determined to wrangle whatever revenue it

could, not from the planters who were still politically powerful even after the rise of

Crown Colony government, but from the peasant class. Representatives on the

Legislative Council generally implemented head taxes, taxes for road repairs, duties

on domestically sold sugar and coffee, and duties on imported consumer goods, all

                                                                                                               72 John Stuart, "Letter Detailing a Way Forward for Giving the Accompong More Land, April 8, 1881," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 73 Fgbe, "Rights and Privileges of the Marons, undated, " 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 74 Ibid.; Smith, "Letter to Mr. French, May 30, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 75 Holt, 202. 76 Ibid., 317.

  113  

regressive taxes that disproportionately impacted the peasant class.77 Minutes from

Legislative Council meetings reflected that they consistently tried to implement many

other regressive tax measures, including abolishing the property tax (a tax that would

disproportionately affect planters because they owned so much acreage) and imposing

a housing tax that would count every building on a parcel of land, no matter how small

or insignificant the building.78 Reverend Henry Clarke, a man who had a close

connection to the Black peasant population, served on the Council and sought to shift

the taxation burden from the poor to those who could better afford it. He proposed

eliminating taxes on small houses; shifting responsibility for the land tax to wealthy

private landowners; or trying to abolish the House tax, the Holdings Tax, or the

Education Tax as those taxes had a disproportionate impact on the poor.79 Ultimately,

his motions were rejected, and Jamaica continued to collect less and less revenue.

Such regressive tax policies were not met with silence on the part of the peasants, even

before the Morant Bay Rebellion, there were riots because “sugar workers and small

settlers vexed at ‘the indiscreet and irregular’ procedures of the parish tax collector.”80

The Jamaican government did understand that the right and privilege to pay

taxes had to mean something in return, and so they were concerned that the

                                                                                                               77 Ibid. 78When council members were considering these issues, they did not think of any “negroes” as landowners. “Negroes” were the people who paid the housing taxes, etc. Hence, abolishing property taxes was meant to benefit White Jamaicans without giving thought to other populations who could have been affected. Unidentified, Minutes from a Legislative Council Meeting Dated 23 October 18851885; Unidentified, Minutes from Meeting Dated 19 May 18991899. 79 Unidentified, Minutes from the Legislative Council Meeting; Unidentified, Minutes from the Legislative Concil Meeting Dated March 271896; Unidentified, Minutes from Legislative Concil Meeting Dated April 191898. 80 Holt, 205.

  114  

Accompong received government services for their tax dollars. The specific forms of

taxation applicable to the Accompong included taxes on land (not treaty-granted

lands) and on stock. From the outset of the Cook’s Bottom land dispute, local

government officials, and the police had started noticing the relationship between the

roads leading to Accompong and the community’s insistence that they were exempt

from paying taxes. In a letter to the Constabulary, a police officer wrote that

Accompong is difficult to access because, in part, “the keeping this road in repair . . .

is left to the discretion of the Maroons themselves – they, in consideration of their

exemption from the payment of taxes, being looked to by the local authorities as the

proper parties to keep the road in good order: the result is that the road is sadly

neglected and the taxes, of course, remain unpaid.”81 As the government started trying

to resolve the Cook’s Bottom issue with the Accompong, it included in their

discussions the importance of paying taxes.82 In response, the Accompong noticed and

requested the services the government should have been providing. After meeting with

the government in 1870, the Accompong requested that they receive better roads,

medical aid, and schools.83 Concurrently, the government authorized employees to

start the process of assessing services being provided to Maroons, because their

requests were reasonable.

                                                                                                               81 J. H. Prederville, "Letter to Headquarters Constabulary Office, 29 December, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 82 Smith, "Letter to Mr. French, May 30, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Report About the Scots Hall and Accompong Maroons Connected to Paying Taxes, December 2, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 83 Unidentified, "Exemption of Maroons from Taxes, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  115  

The process of ascertaining Accompong community services proved to be

slow. In 1871, the Governor again pressed the parochial boards again to tell him

whether money had been granted to the Accompong to repair their roads, as the

Maroons were complaining that no one had fixed their roads since 1838, the year of

emancipation.84 In 1872, the Maroons made yet another request for a school to be built

in Accompong because they saw no movement on this project.85

The governor’s office asked for an accounting from both the St. Elizabeth

Municipal Board, the Board responsible for distributing medical aid for paupers, and

the Inspector of Schools to check the status of schools in Accompong.86 Pursuant to

these requests, it was clear that the local governments had never allocated any money

for Accompong Maroon services, including the school and the roads.87 By 1872,

significant progress had finally been made: the local governments announced to the

Governor’s office that grants had been made both for building schools in Accompong

and for paving roads.88 Yet later that year, the government could not state with

confidence that it had allocated money to provide these services. The roads still had

                                                                                                               84 Unidentified, "Governor's Request to Mr. Salmon, January 7, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Letter to J.R. Mann, January 7, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 85 Robert James McLeod, "Letter to Sir John Peter Grant, April 11, 1872," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 86 Unidentified, "Letter to W.B. Salmon, " 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Letter to Mr. Savage, Esq., Inspector of Schools, January 7, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 87 John Savage, "Letter to the General Inspector's Office About When Grants Will Be Available, October 25, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Letter Concerning Road Grants to the Collector of Taxes Office, November 13, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 88 Letter from the Clerk of the Parochial Board to the Colonial Secretary's Office, "May 14, 1872," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; John Savage, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, April 29, 1872," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Report About Jamaica's Maroons, " 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  116  

not been repaired, no school had been built, and the record is silent concerning

whether poor aid or medical assistance was provided to the Accompong. Ultimately,

while the Jamaican government emphasized the importance of paying taxes in

exchange for services that it would provide to the Accompong, four years after the

land dispute concerning Cook’s Bottom, the government hoped that the Accompong

would buy Cook’s Bottom in individual parcels and pay taxes on those parcels. Yet,

the Jamaican government never provided a single service to the community.

The Accompong response to tax payments may explain why they received no

services: they argued with the Jamaican government that the treaty prevented the

government from taxing them at all. Generally, as the government summarized their

position, land “had been granted to them and their heirs forever free of all taxation,

with the condition also that their beasts used for carrying commodities should be free

of taxation.”89 Particularly important in this quote is the use of the word granted: only

one document could have granted the Maroons anything and that would have been the

1739 treaty to bring peace between the British and the Maroons. However, nowhere in

the treaty does it state that the Maroons were to have this land free of taxes. Since

1739, nothing in the historical record suggests that any Maroon groups were ever

taxed for their land or their stock, creating a customary legal expectation for the

Accompong (as well as the other Maroon groups); as the government ceded, custom

set a precedent that would be unwise to undo, “As it has been decided that the custom

                                                                                                               89 Fgbe, "Rights and Privileges of the Marons, undated, " 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.Italics mine.

  117  

under which they have been exempt from taxes on the lands they hold in common

shall not be interfered with . . .”90

Government sources also suggest that the Accompong claimed they did not

have to pay taxes, like other Jamaican citizens, as recompense for upholding their end

of the treaty. In addition to the land grant given by treaty, they argue that the stock and

land “also be free of tax in return for services rendered by them to the whites and to

the government in the two Maroon Wars and Rebellion of 1832.”91 The specific

services rendered in both Maroon Wars and the Rebellion of 1832 needs some

clarifying, particularly because with the Maroon Wars, one may not have considered

the Maroons as providing a “service” from the perspective of the Jamaican

government. The first service provided at the end of the First Maroon War was peace.

In exchange for perpetual freedom from slavery, at least one thousand acres of land,

meetings with the Governor, and putting down any slave rebellions and defending

Jamaica against her external enemies, there was peace between “the British” and the

Accompong.

The services the Accompong provided during the Second Maroon War were

failing to assist the Trelawney in their rebellion. Neither did, for that matter, any of

Jamaica’s Eastern Maroon groups, which explains why none of the other groups could

be deported from Jamaica. Finally, 1832 marks the year of the Christmas Rebellion

when slaves in northwest Jamaica just south of Montego Bay sought to secure the

                                                                                                               90 J.B. Mann, "Letter Concerning Maroon Lands and Taxes, 1869," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 91 Esq. Mr. Burke, Crown Solicitor, "Letter to Col. J. R. Mann, R.E., January 7, 1871," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  118  

freedom they thought the King had granted and the Jamaican government had

withheld. In addition to the militia, Jamaica had called upon the Maroons, pursuant to

their obligations in the treaty, to suppress the rebellion, and the Accompong assisted

the government. Ultimately, these other services reflected the seriousness with which

the Accompong viewed the treaty, and as they upheld their end of the bargain, they

expected the Jamaican government to uphold its own end by not taxing Maroons for

their land and stock.

However, the treaty reflects another issue suggesting that the power

relationship between any of the Maroon groups and the Jamaican government was

such that taxation was not really an option. Treaties are contracts between “states” or

certainly sovereign bodies to secure economic and political rights with each other;

they can negotiate and enforce the agreement amongst themselves. Both entities are

covered by their own laws and customs and, with the exception of the limits placed by

the treaty, their societies are governed by their internal legal structures.

While the treaty does not explicitly state that the Maroons were exempt from

taxation, neither did it explicitly provide the Jamaican government the right to tax the

Maroons. Ultimately, to the Accompong, one sovereign cannot tax another and,

therefore, “the British” had no right to tax them at all. This exemption from taxation

did not apply only to the Maroons at treaty signing, but also to their descendants,

“That they shall enjoy and possess for themselves and posterity for ever [my

emphasis], all the lands situate and lying between Trelawney town and the cockpits, to

the amount of fifteen hundred acres, bearing north-west from said Trelawney town . .

  119  

.”92 The Accompong interpreted this perpetual land grant as a privilege that applied to

a person because of their lineage. This is a distinct argument from the Jamaican

government, which sought to include or exclude land from taxation based upon the

location of the land. If the land purchased by an individual was outside the treaty land

grant, it would be subjected to taxation. For the Accompong, if a Maroon purchased

the land, no matter where in Jamaica, the land parcel would be exempt from taxation.

The Accompong had enshrined in the treaty the notion that because they were

Maroons, they were exempt from taxation.

The Jamaican government took a different view on taxation of the Maroons’

lands and stock. First, the treaty said nothing explicit about exempting Maroons from

taxation. Second, the Land Allotment Act was the governing law, because it explicitly

superseded any treaty provisions, no matter if it was a unilateral action taken without

negotiation with the Maroon groups whose treaties were being abandoned. The Land

Allotment Act made the Maroons the same as all other Jamaicans and were entitled to

those rights and privileges in the Act, in this case paying taxes just like their fellow

Jamaicans.

This gulf between the Accompong and the Jamaican government ultimately

discouraged the Maroons from purchasing Cook’s Bottom. They rejected the

government’s stance that Maroons both own the land individually and pay taxes on

                                                                                                               92 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).

  120  

that land: “The result of enquiries made of the Director of Public Works was that he

considered it certain the Maroons would not take the land [Cook’s Bottom] in separate

lots even if offered them free, as in 1869, a very low price was fixed for the land but

no Maroon would take land to be held separately.”93 It took until 1894 before the

Jamaican government acknowledged this schism between themselves and the

Maroons. Further, even individually owned land tended to be used for the benefit of

the entire community and was expected to be defended by the entire community. By

the end of the conflict concerning Cook’s Bottom, the Accompong retained their

“innumerable distinctions” and were not one of Queen’s Subjects: they remained

distinct from Jamaica’s “negroes” by operation of law.

Conclusion

The dispute between the Accompong and the Jamaican government concerning

Cook’s Bottom extended over thirty years. The Jamaican government discussed

Cook’s Bottom and its implications well into the 1930s, still trying to lure the

Accompong to buy it.94 A full understanding of the tensions between the Jamaican

government and the Accompong connected to Cook’s Bottom are based in the rule of

law: disputes about which applicable law governed the parameters of the land dispute,

and whether the primary issue was adverse possession or taking control over land

already owned. The Maroons thought the treaty was the applicable rule of law, but the

Jamaican government thought that the Land Allotment Act was the appropriate

                                                                                                               93 Cork, "Precis Re Accompong Maroon Land, May 26, 1894," 1B576333 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 94 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary, February 20, 1930," 1B57729 CSO 2 (1929), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  121  

framework for dealing with the Accompong. Regardless of the letter of the law, the

government sought to make the Maroons just like the Black populace who would pay

taxes. The government saw Cook’s Bottom as a way for them to get something from

the Maroons. Taxes created a revenue stream for an island under great economic

distress and so the government tried to gain some of that revenue from the Maroons.

The Cook’s Bottom issue also reflected three important points about the

Accompong. We see that a community formed in resistance, namely warfare, would

have to maintain itself in resistance. It was because the Accompong resisted particular

governmental actions that they kept Cook’s Bottom including refusing to let the

surveyor complete the survey of Accompong which would have limited Accompong’s

borders contrary to their understanding of their borders at treaty signing. They also

interfered with the arrest of Accompong Maroons accused of larceny, and released

community members from prison because their arrest did not comply with the rule of

law dictated by the treaty. The Accompong never threatened outright warfare in trying

to win Cook’s Bottom, although their threats of bloodshed when a police officer tried

to take the accused to jail suggested that warfare was never taken off of the table as a

means of resolving this dispute.

Ultimately, we see that the Accompong were not averse to resisting when land

was at stake. Individual land ownership was seen as usurping their land because in

their communities, all their lands, whether treaty-given, or purchased outside the

boundaries of Accompong, were lands that would be usable by all community

members and functioned effectively as communal. The Accompong were concerned

  122  

about the government usurping their lands because of the placemaking narrative about

Accompong’s boundaries. When the government tried to sell Cook’s Bottom to the

Accompong they saw it as another example of the government selling them lands that

already belonged to them. Further, taxing Maroon-owned lands was another example

of the Jamaican government trying to take their lands it was trying to extract revenue

from something it did not own.

Because of the solemnization process in signing the treaty the Accompong

perceived the treaty as an ever-enduring, unchanging document. Usurping the treaty

went to the core of the relationship between the Accompong and the Jamaican

government. A breach of this document was not even seen as possible and further

explains the Accompong’s pull to resist the Jamaican government’s land policies vis-

à-vis their community.

Within the last ten to fifteen years (i.e. 1995 – 2008), the Accompong have

again tussled with the Jamaican government about Cook’s Bottom. The government

wanted to use the Superintendent’s house in Cook’s Bottom as a base for the Jamaican

Park Service to tend the cockpits.95 The Accompong rejected their overtures yet again.

At the point when I conducted interviews among the Accompong, they seemed to have

been fully in charge of this property.96 The taxation issues raised in this chapter are

central in the next chapter as this work turns to examining Colonel Rowe’s tax

                                                                                                               95 Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008). 96 Within this same period, a private Jamaican citizen squatted on the property and lived there – a possession that if left too long, would enable the citizen to make a claim for adversely possessing Cook’s Bottom. The Accompong evicted him from Cook’s Bottom as well. Ibid.

  123  

petitions and the overlapping issues of Maroon taxation, the communal nature of

Accompong properties, and the nature of Accompong resistance from 1870 - 1883.

  124  

Chapter 4: Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions: Treaty Based Objections to Paying Taxes (1870 – 1883)

Introduction

In 1870, Colonel Rowe, the Accompong’s political leader, sent a petition to the

colonial government challenging the propriety of their tax bill. He argued that the

Maroons had never paid taxes and that the 1739 treaty prohibited them from doing so.

The issues surrounding Colonel Rowe’s tax petitions center around the Accompong

insisting on their historical stance of not paying taxes and the colonial state trying to

force them to act like of the Queen’s subjects and pay them. Jamaica both offered the

Accompong community services and reprieve from military duty in return for their

paying taxes, and seized their stock. Yet the Accompong insisted that they were

exempt from taxes on real property and stock and failed to become Jamaicans.

The Accompong were determined to resist the efforts of the colonial state to

collect taxes. They rejected the government’s authority to enforce tax collection; they

released the captured stock and threatened to disturb the peace in the event the

government continued in this direction. Ultimately, the government was unwilling to

use force to compel the Accompong to comply with the Land Allotment Act, which

left them unable to fulfill their post-emancipation plans for this community. In

providing greater context about taxing the Maroons, this chapter will now discuss the

economic conditions in late nineteenth-century Jamaica that made taxation not only a

philosophical, but an economic issue.

Rule of Law and Taxation (Pre-1883)

  125  

The rule of law governed who paid taxes, and the Queen’s subjects could not

avoid tax obligations. But the application of that law revealed gaps between who was

to endure the impact of taxation. The tax system put a disproportionate burden on

former slaves to pay many sorts of taxes including housing and sales taxes.1 The

Jamaican government tried to narrow the gap of the tax burden between the formerly

enslaved and the Accompong and expand the group of “negroes.” However, as

discussed previously the Accompong relied on the treaty and remained outside the

political and economic conditions now dictated by the colonial government.

The government saw no other possibility outside of the rule of law for

organizing societies. In 1837, Lord Glenelg wrote:

The freedom to which I refer must of course, however, be that of men living in civil society, enjoying the franchises and performing the duty of citizens. Their privileges cannot be unconnected with restrictions against the abuse of them; for neither in Great Britain nor in any part of the civilized world can we point at any class of men who are not subjected to laws defining for the good of society the obligations of all its members to each other, and to the state collectively.2

Glenelg further confirms the civilizing mission that was in part the sentiment

of emancipation.3 He noted that after emancipation there was a “greater respect for the

laws” that allowed for more security and the increasing value of property.4 The

prevailing assumption was that people wanted nothing more than to be part of

civilized society where the rule of law defined the obligations of the state to the person                                                                                                                1 Legislative Council, "Meeting of the Legislative Council - 27th Day of March 1895, March 27, 1895," 1B/59/13, Kingston, Jamaica. 2 Lord Glenelg, "Copy of a Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to Teh Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., November 6, 1837," Papers for the Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Colonies, London. 3 Ibid. 4 Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London.

  126  

and the obligations of the person to the state. Under this framework, people would

perform the duty of citizens. Based on what Glenelg wrote to other West Indian

governors, the formerly enslaved had to perform the following duties: work

(preferably on a plantation), be good and upright Christians, abide by the rule of law,

and take their earned income and spend it in the colonial society by both purchasing

goods and paying taxes. This was the definition of a good “negroe.”5

It did not occur to Jamaican authorities that the Maroons would reject the Land

Allotment Act and reject becoming the Queen’s subjects. Maroons tended to accept

her authority over the treaty on behalf of the British; however, paying taxes was not

explicitly part of the blood covenant.6 They did not see themselves as breaking the rule

of law, but as upholding it.7 Undeterred, the Jamaican government sought to bring the

Accompong into the more complex political and economic vision of post-

emancipation society that challenged the ability of the Black peasantry to acquire land.

As stated by legal scholar Patricia Williams, “Blacks went from being owned by

others to having everything around them owned by others. In a civilization that values

private property above all else, this meant a devaluation of person, a removal of blacks

not just from the market but from the pseudo-spiritual circle of psychic and civic

communion.”8 While Williams speaks to the situation governing the formerly enslaved

in the U.S., the Maroons always presented a problem for the colonial state beyond the

                                                                                                               5 Ibid. 6 Robt Jas. McLeod Henry Octavius Rowe, Joseph B. Foster, "Letter to Anthony Musgrave About the Arrest of Two Maroons and Seizing Their Mules, October, 1882," 1B/57/6/33/3 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Kingston. 7 Ibid. 8Patricia Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 71.

  127  

threat to the institution of slavery; the Maroons presented an alternative to slavery.

Maroons were not owned and by owning land they defied the colonial

conceptualization of how Blacks functioned in Jamaican society. The same problem

emerged after slavery. Maroons never functioned as subjects and eluded basic

obligations of the colonial state such as paying taxes. Maroons continued to present an

alternative to the post-emancipation vision of what it meant to be Black.

Philosophical positions about tax obligations aside, Jamaica experienced

economic challenges in the post-emancipation era because of a severe decline in

revenue connected with sugar production that continued into the 1880s. Not only did

peasants refuse to work on plantations, but the price of sugar also fell on the world

market so that planters could not command the profits they planned.9

Still the Jamaican Assembly maintained a regressive taxation system that

shifted the tax burden onto the peasantry.10 Indeed,

From 1867 into the 1930s, the Jamaican government would draw three-fourths of its revenue from customs duties, primarily on food and fees. Meanwhile, the taxes on exports declined by more than 14 percent between 1867 and 1881, while the public debt rose 61 percent to pay for immigration expenses and railway bonds incurred almost entirely for the benefit of the planters.11

The Legislative Council could garner much more money from the planters, but

retained Jamaica’s low tax rate so that Jamaica never increased its overall revenue.

Conversely, while the Accompong, would not contribute much in the way of taxes,

any revenue would have been helpful. The government needed all the Queen’s

                                                                                                               9 Holt, 118 - 120. 10 Satchell. 11 Holt, 337.

  128  

subjects to pay taxes and the symbolism of the Accompong paying taxes was central

to ensuring that the island’s Black peasant population continued to pay theirs as well.12

Accompong Challenge to Taxes: The Treaty (1870)

In early 1870, Colonel Rowe, the leader of the Accompong, filed a petition

with the Jamaican government concerning the upcoming tax bill for the Accompong

community. The government acknowledged his petition and suggested that the

Accompong only owed taxes for the time period beginning in 1842 when the Land

Allotment Act, “gave the Maroons all the privileges of the rest of Her Majesty’s

subjects [and] they became liable in the enjoyment of their privileges to pay any new

taxes which the Queen’s gov. might impose on classes of Her Majesty’s subjects

without distinction.”13 The government offered to send an official to explain the tax

situation to the Colonel and to arrange for its collection. The language in the letter

stated that the law that gave “Maroons all the privileges of the rest of Her Majesty’s

subjects,” a direct reference to the Land Allotment Act, the legal justification for

taxing the Maroons.14

The Accompong responded arguing that the government’s explanation was

directly contrary to their interpretation of the treaty. Indeed the Accompong proposed

                                                                                                               12J. Stuart, "Letter to the Colonial Secreatary's Office About Accompong Taxes, March 28, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. In this document, Rev. Stuart explicitly states “I do not consider that the maroons of Accompong are at this present able to pay taxes.” Government Surveyor Thomas Harrison, "Letter from Mr. Harrision to General Mann, April 2, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. This letter explicitly states that “[t]he numerous laws relating to the Maroons place them on the same footing as the rest of the population and all the Maroons throughout the Island have obeyed these laws except those at Accompong who have always refused to pay taxes . . .” 13Governor of Jamaica, "Letter from the Governor to the Accompong Maroons Concerning the Payment of Taxes, March 5, 1870," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 14 Ibid.

  129  

different terms: they insisted that the Jamaican government not simply unilaterally

change the terms of their treaty, but instead actually renegotiate the treaty. Mr.

Salmon, one of Jamaica’s tax collectors, went to Accompong to discuss the tax issues.

Colonel Rowe explained to Mr. Salmon that the township and land surrounding

Accompong had been given to the Accompong and their heirs free of taxation. The

reason they had such generous terms was because of the settlement of the Maroon

Wars, and the assistance the Maroons had provided in suppressing the 1831 Christmas

Wars. Maroons who lived on lands located outside of Accompong owed taxes on

those lands.15

The Accompong stated what they expected from the Jamaican colonial

government and how the government met or missed their expectations. They argued

that since emancipation (1838), they had not received any money for the upkeep of

their roads when before they were allowed £500 for this purpose; further, they had

never received any parochial (local) or medical aid. The Jamaican colonial

government had also failed to pay for any new schools or churches needed in the

community. Finally, the government had denied them their rifles “leaving them

entirely powerless in case of their assistance being required . . .”16 Therefore, if the

Jamaican government expected them to pay taxes, it would have to meet four

conditions: other Maroon groups would have to agree to pay taxes; the Accompong

                                                                                                               15 W. B. Salmon, "Letter from the Collector of Taxes to the Acting Collector General Concerning the Accompong and Taxation, August 19, 1870," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 16Ibid. This particular statement begs the question of whether the government simply did not see providing the Accompong with rifles as a term of the treaty, or whether they were afraid of “exciting” the Maroons as a protective measure decided to keep them unarmed.

  130  

would no longer be required to serve in Jamaica’s military; they would get their share

of Parochial money and could send their sick and aged to the Poor House; and finally

that churches and schools would be supported by the government.17

One more point must be made about these terms. Once again, it is important to

note that the Accompong were proposing a renegotiation of the treaty. The first step in

such renegotiations would be an internal matter: that all Maroons would have to agree

to taxation.18 Further, the Accompong argued that they would exchange one term of

the treaty for another term: in order for them to exercise the “privilege” of taxation,

they would have to be relinquished from the other “privilege” of military service, an

insistence on not having the same “immunities and privileges” as all the Queen’s

subjects. The Accompong did not acknowledge the authority of the Land Allotment

Act over them; the only document governing the relationship between their

community and the colonial government would be the treaty. Hence, into the late

1870s, the Accompong framed the taxation issue as a renegotiation of the 1739 treaty.

Government Services for Taxes (1878 - 1879)

On the other hand, the Jamaican colonial government assumed that it was

finally using the Land Allotment Act with the Accompong community. However, the

application of the Land Allotment Act presented two problems. First, “[t]he non-

collection of taxes in previous years naturally helped to confirm the misperception of

                                                                                                               17 Ibid. 18 The Colonels from all of the Maroon communities occasionally convened meetings with each other to grapple with the issues facing the communities. One historical example we see of their cooperation was during the Second Maroon War when the Trelawney Maroons decided to fight the Jamaican government; the other Maroon groups did not come to their aid. There was clearly a tacit agreement that they would not fight in this war that could only be achieved with discussion among the communities.

  131  

the Accompong Maroons that the free grant of land under the treaty of 1739 carried

with it exemption from taxes.”19 Second, the government realized that they had never

provided services to the Accompong in part because they had never paid taxes. Finally

following up on service requests connected to the Cook’s Bottom land dispute, in

1878, the Jamaican government, asked Mr. Kinnison, a minister who had previously

dealt with the Accompong community, to tell the Accompong that they were

providing the funds to build roads.20 The government’s decision to repair roads was

not without controversy. The surveyor, Thomas Harrison, had agreed with Rev.

Kinnison that the roads leading to Accompong were in terrible shape, but asserted that

this challenge could have been overcome if the Accompong were simply willing to

pay taxes.21

The Jamaican government decided it would provide the money to the

Accompong, but not pave the roads because the Office of the Director of Roads was

understaffed.22 It was recommended that the Parochial Road Commissioners should

supervise building the roads while Rev. Kinnison recommended that he employ the

Accompong to fix them.23 By June, the Jamaican government had decided to accept

                                                                                                               19Unidentified, "Employee Note Concerning Accompong Maroon Payment of Taxes, June 1, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 20 EKS, "Note Requesting Communication Be Sent to Rev. Kinnison About Accompong Roads, August 28, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 21 Thomas Harrison, "Letter from Mr. Harrision to General Mann, April 2, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 22 J. Mann, "Letter to the Office of the Director of Roads and the Surveyor General, June 20, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 23Office of Dir. Rds & Surveyor General, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office Stating No Resources to Build Accompong Roads, June 20, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica; John Kinnison, "Letter to the Governor's Office, June 10, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica; J. Mann, "Letter Suggesting Parochial Road Commissioners Repair the Roads, June 20, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  132  

Rev. Kinnison’s offer and have him supervise building the road.24 By 1879, the

Jamaican government issued the £100 to repair the Accompong’s roads and as a

condition of the Accompong receiving this money, they would have to make sure the

roads remained in good condition.25 The government hoped that the Accompong

would directly use this grant to repair the roads themselves, but as of late September,

they had not taken over the responsibility for repairing the road.26

The government’s decision to fund improvement of the roads leading to

Accompong marked a definitive shift from how such matters were handled under the

treaty to how they should be handled under the Land Allotment Act. Before

emancipation, the government hoped that the Accompong would comply with the

treaty and fund and carry out necessary road repairs. Now, the government agreed to

fund these services for the Accompong, including providing limited employment

opportunities for some of its members. The linchpin in this arrangement was receiving

tax revenue from the Accompong, an issue that could not be taken for granted.

The government also provided medical and poor relief for Maroons in its quest

to encourage the Accompong to pay taxes. Joseph Foster, an Accompong Maroon,

made a request for aid from the government in 1876. While the government thought he

was an appropriate person to receive aid, it never followed up on the request.27 Once

                                                                                                               24 Unidentified, "Decision to Have Rev. Kinnison Supervise Building of the Accompong Road, June 24, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 25 Custos of St. Elizabeth, "Extract from Unofficial Role from Custos of St. Elizabeth, August 14, 1879," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 26 J. Stuart, "Letter to Acting Colonial Secretary Walker About the Maroons Repairing Their Roads, September 27, 1879," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 27 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to W.H. Coke Concerning Parochial Aid for Major Joseph Foster, June 22, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  133  

again, in 1878, he requested medical aid from the government and forced the issue of

the law applicable to the Maroons. Most of the petition directly addressed the sorts of

injuries that prevented him from being “able to do any hard work,” but his opening

argument states that he deserved aid because he “was long serving the Crown was in

many Rebelion [sic] up to the late St. Thomas rebelion [sic] acting Captain under Col

Fife & now acting as major for Town.”28 Major Stone’s invocation of the Morant Bay

Rebellion that started in St. Thomas parish suggested two related bases on which he

was deserving of parochial aid: payment for services rendered and the treaty.

In Maroon communications with the Jamaican government, the Accompong

often argued that they had done something for the state, namely protected Jamaica’s

citizens from the Christmas Rebellion or the Morant Bay Rebellion, and had never

been paid for their services.29 This understanding that the Maroons should be paid for

services rendered is connected to the 1739 treaty and has statutory precedent.30 The

treaty states that the Maroons should be paid for returning runaway slaves and a later

statute reinforced this incentive and actually increased the amount Maroons should be

paid.31 So when a member of the Accompong community requested aid and invoked

                                                                                                               28 Joseph B. Foster, "Letter to Governor Sir Anthony Musgrave, June 11, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 29 Mann, "Letter Concerning Maroon Lands and Taxes, 1869," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 30 "An Act to Reap "an Act for the Better Order and Government of the Negroes Belonging to Teh Several Negroe-Towns and for Preventing Them from Purchasing of Slaves; and for Encouraging the Said Negroes to Go in Pursuit of Runaway Slaves; and for Other Purposes Aforementioned; and for Giving the Maroon Negroes Further Protection and Security; for Altering the Mode of Trial; and for Other Purposes," in The Laws of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1791). 31"An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the

  134  

his service in the Morant Bay Rebellion, he suggested that he was not adequately paid

for his service as required by the treaty. His request reinforced the treaty as the legal

document by which relationships between the Maroons and the government should be

governed. The government decided that he had a good claim and so they requested

that the St. Elizabeth parochial board provide relief for him.32 The government

undermined its quest to bolster the importance of the Land Allotment Act to the

Accompong community in this transaction because it never corrected Major Stone’s

rationale for receiving poor and medical aid. The government continued with its

understanding with the Accompong that it would provide services for taxes, but the

Accompong presumed that they were receiving poor and medical aid pursuant to the

treaty.

Forcing Tax Collection I (1882)

Now that the government had made a commitment to provide services to the

Accompong community, the Accompong still did not make a single tax payment to the

colonial government, much to the government’s consternation. The tax office stopped

trying to coax the Accompong to pay taxes, and instead decided to force the

Accompong to do so. On September 21, 1882, the Accompong Colonel’s council

wrote the government complaining about actions an employee took with the

community. Some Accompong Maroons hired their mules out to a man named Daniel,                                                                                                                Island of Jamaica (1739). "An Act to Reap "an Act for the Better Order and Government of the Negroes Belonging to Teh Several Negroe-Towns and for Preventing Them from Purchasing of Slaves; and for Encouraging the Said Negroes to Go in Pursuit of Runaway Slaves; and for Other Purposes Aforementioned; and for Giving the Maroon Negroes Further Protection and Security; for Altering the Mode of Trial; and for Other Purposes," in The Laws of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1791). 32 Unknown, "Letter Stating to Referring a Request for Medical Aid to the Parochial Board, Unknown," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  135  

a Maroon who lived nearby in the town of Elderslie. On September 15, the

constabulary seized two mules on Daniel’s property for failure of the Accompong

Maroons to pay taxes and refused to return the mules to the Maroons until they paid

£4.50.33

The Maroons asserted that no one within Accompong’s borders owed taxes

because the “’Treaty’ which stands now 142 years old shows that this Maroons are

free of all duty.”34 They also explained that the mules had belonged to some widows

who had large families and lived within the borders of Accompong. Women without

men to support their families deserved extra consideration by the government because

they had to support their families, implying that this was a role normally reserved for

men. Finally, the Council insisted that they would not breach the peace.35

The Colonel sent another letter about the issue to the Colonial Secretary’s

Office, in which he conceded that the Maroons had to pay the taxes, in contradiction to

the September 21, 1882 letter the Council sent. In this letter, the Colonel emphasized

the poverty of the Accompong community in addition to the fact that the community

was not interested in breaching the peace, although he says that the treatment being

issued by the government could cause a larger disturbance.36

The government turned inward to determine how to proceed. It concluded that

the Accompong were “entitled to the same but to no greater privileges than other

                                                                                                               33 Henry O. Rowe, "Letter to H. Coke Concerning the Seizure of Accompong Mules, September 21, 1882," 1B/5/76/33/3 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36Robt Jas. McLeod Henry Octavius Rowe, "Letter to Anthony Musgrave Concerning Seizure of Accompong Mules, September 21, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  136  

people” and then instructed others to refer the matter to the Acting Collector

General.37 The language concerning the “same rights and privileges” framed the tax

question through the lens of the Land Allotment Act. One employee directly sought

clarification of the Accompong’s letter: “What is meant of our treaty?”38 Indeed, the

treaty would potentially present the greatest challenge to taxation and undermined the

ability to enforce the Land Allotment Act. There was recognition with the government

that they needed to resolve this legal conflict.

Use of Force for Tax Collection (1882)

The Inspector General recommended that Inspector Wedderburn, the police

officer dealing with the Accompong, work with Reverend Stuart to encourage the

Maroons to pay their taxes immediately, that he bring readied police reinforcements,

and that more police to be available just in case.39 The Inspector General’s response

was consistent with the police’s usual reaction when members of the Black population,

for example, refused to be evicted from their lands. Veront Satchell, an historian of

land holding among the formerly enslaved, writes of the following:

At Bushy Park, St. Catharine, in 1867 the peasant-squatters who were being ejected not only resisted the legal owner, Louis Verley, but also the police. Between 70 and 80 persons were arrested and tried in the Circuit Court for riotous assembly and forcible trespass. A strong detachment, numbering 100 constables and three Inspectors, had to be drawn from St Andrew, St Catherine and St Thomas in 1871 to keep the peace at Bath, St Thomas, on account of alleged peasant-squatters on Mr Melville’s property, parading the streets of Bath

                                                                                                               37Unidentified, "Note Concerning Accompong Maroon Taxation and the State of the Law, October 20, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 38Ibid. 39 EHB Hartrell, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office Concerning Accompong Maroon Taxation, October 11, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica; A. Wedderburn, "Letter to the Inspector General About the Acccompong Paying Taxes, October 17, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  137  

armed with heavy sticks and using threatening language, on the day of the trial of the eviction case between themselves and Mr Melville, violence was averted because ‘the demonstration of power [had] struck terror in their [the squatters’] hearts and [had] stamped out most effectively all show of dissatisfaction and inclination for mischief.”40

Blacks displayed riotous behavior when it came to land, and he was prepared to handle

this effectively in the event the Accompong planned on rioting. The police, because of

their dealings with Blacks understood that force was the only means to evict them

from lands they did not own. They knew that it would take force to require the

Accompong to pay taxes. However, just because the police force determined that force

would be necessary to get the Maroons to comply with the Land Allotment Act does

not mean that the colonial government wanted to proceed along that path.

In fact, the colonial government disagreed with the police inspector’s

suggestion and decided to speak with the Maroons first. They enlisted Rev. Stuart’s

help with this task, but he was unavailable and so Inspector Wedderburn went to

Accompong himself and met with 150 – 200 Maroons for two hours “endeavouring to

persuade the Maroons to pay their taxes quietly . . .”41 The Accompong responded,

saying, “they would not pay any taxes as long as they had a drop of blood left.”42

Further, the Accompong did not acknowledge the Jamaican governor as having any

authority over them and that they would only submit to the authority of the “Kings and

Queens of England, who in former years signed treaties with them.”43 The Maroons

                                                                                                               40 Satchell, 78. 41 Wedderburn, "Letter to the Inspector General About the Acccompong Paying Taxes, October 17, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid.

  138  

were explicit that the only rule of law they were prepared to acknowledge was the

treaty and under that document, taxes were not required.

Wedderburn had two concerns after his meeting: whether the treaty the

Accompong referred to existed and what it stated. He could not assume that the treaty

was rule of law. Secondly, he also understood that force would be necessary if they

were ever going to get the Accompong to pay taxes, arguing that “[s]hould the

government consider it necessary to compel the Maroons to pay taxes, I must ask that

strong reinforcement be sent to me, as the Maroons of this parish will no doubt be

joined by those of St. James, and the two combined would make a large body.”44 He

left the meeting convinced that the Accompong might use force if the colonial State

insisted that they pay their taxes, contrary to what the Colonel argued in his letter to

the Inspector and the Governor. Ultimately, he came away from the Accompong with

an understanding that they insisted the treaty was the controlling rule of law and were

prepared to do whatever they needed to do to keep the treaty in place.

Forcing Tax Revenue II (1882)

This initial confrontation between the Accompong and the Jamaican

government would not be the last. Later in October 1882, the Colonel wrote to the

Governor of Jamaica complaining about two men whose mules were seized yet again

and the men being placed in “Lock Up” for a day and night when they went to Black

River. He told the government that this action was “consider[ed] a breach of the Peace

                                                                                                               44 Ibid.

  139  

that was concluded between us and the Whites years ago [original emphasis].”45 The

Colonel tried to peacefully settle this issue discussing this matter with both the

Inspector and the Collector of Taxes who would not release the mules on peaceful

terms. Left with no other choice, the Accompong went to the pasture where the mules

were being held and took them back. The Accompong insisted that they would not

breach the peace because “we consider ourself [sic] loyal subjects of our Crown’s

Queen.”46 Contrary to the actions of the Jamaican government, they were following

the dictates of the Crown as embodied by the treaty.

The Police arrested the two Maroons for disorderly conduct because they were

too drunk to be brought before a magistrate. They could not have their mules with

them while they were sobering up in prison.47 The arrested Maroons were not given a

trial; they exhibited remorse for their behavior and promised to the sitting Justice not

to be publicly inebriated in the future.48 Yet the Inspector did not return the mules

when the Maroons had finished their encounter with the criminal justice system,

suggesting that the Maroons’ public drunkenness was pretext for claiming back taxes

from the Accompong. The Inspector never addressed the fact that the tax challenges

may have fueled the second mule seizure. The Land Allotment Act could provide the

Jamaican government a justification for arresting the Maroons and seizing their stock;

however, such an action would be unthinkable under the treaty. Both mule seizures

                                                                                                               45Henry Octavius Rowe, "Letter to Anthony Musgrave Concerning Seizure of Accompong Mules, September 21, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 46Ibid. 47 A. Wedderburn, "Letter to the Inspector General About Seizing Mules from the Accompong, October 18, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 48 Ibid.

  140  

reflected the legal tensions between the Accompong and the Jamaican government

about the source of law applicable to Maroon communities.

Meanwhile, the government, again, looked into the precedent of the Maroons

paying taxes. Although the Accompong had never paid taxes, Maroons in other

parishes were subject to the same order authorizing the police to seize unlicensed

stock if they failed to pay taxes.49 Nevertheless, even the officials involved in seizing

the Maroon’s stock started to question the wisdom of doing so because the

government could not determine who had ordered the Parochial Tax Collector to seize

the Maroon’s stock. The government was caught in a contradictory position, having no

precedent for seizing Maroon stock to pay taxes, but believing they had legal authority

to do so. The government decided not to resort to “extreme measures” to collect taxes,

which included using force. Instead, it again decided to have lawyers within the

colonial government determine whether there was a treaty; whether the government

recognized it; and determine the implications of that recognition for the Accompong’s

land.50

Ultimately, after the mule seizure of the mules from the Maroons, the issue of

the controlling law when dealing with the Maroons was brought into the open. The

only way in which the Maroons would, legally, be required to pay taxes was if the

Land Allotment Act had legitimacy, not only within the Jamaican community, but also

among the Maroons. However, based on the Accompong’s response to having to pay

                                                                                                               49Unidentified, "Note Referring Tax Collections to the Acting Collector General, September 26, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 50HH Coke, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office Wondering If the Treaty Had to Be Considered, October 24, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  141  

taxes as the Queen’s subjects, the Land Allotment Act continued to have little saliency

and so the community turned to the treaty to justify their position. After members of

the Jamaican government listened to the Accompong’s reasons for not paying taxes,

the police and other employees of the Jamaican government were also forced to

evaluate whether the treaty still existed (technically, it did not because of the Land

Allotment Act, but practically, the government still contended with it), whether it was

a legitimate legal instrument, and to examine whether it had any authority over the

question of taxation. The government decided not to use force to compel the Maroons

to be like the Queen’s subjects surrounding them and pay taxes.

Accompong Silences About the Land Allotment Act

The Accompong implicitly argued that one sovereign had no authority to tax

another, the basis for not acknowledging the Land Allotment Act. The oral histories I

collected with the Accompong were silent about the Land Allotment Act and do not

recognize anything that would challenge their sovereignty.

Why would there be such a silence in the Accompong narratives? After all, if

the treaty were supreme, no harm would result by naming the Act. One explanation is

that the government never mentioned the act by name in dealings with the

Accompong. The Jamaican government consistently repeated in meetings with the

Maroons that they were to be treated like all of the Queen’s subjects, were subject to

taxation, and no longer entitled to communally owned land, for example. The

government never named the Act, just the consequences of the Act and that was

mirrored in the Accompong oral history.

  142  

However, that explanation is lacking in that it does not embrace issues of

power embedded in historical silences. The challenge is that “not all silences are equal

. . . any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique

process, and the operation required to deconstruct these silences will vary

accordingly.”51 Therefore, it becomes critical to examine the context in which this

silence occurs in the Accompong narratives about land and its connection to the

Accompong community.

The Accompong may have had grave concerns about the state of their

community and whether it could survive without renewed warfare in light of the

government moving its agenda. The petition from Colonel Rowe about whether

Maroons should pay taxes occurred on the heels of the Cook’s Bottom land dispute.

The government already tried to ensure that Maroons acted like the rest of the island’s

Blacks by granting them permission to use Cook’s Bottom and denying them its

acquisition by adverse possession. The Maroons interpreted this as the government

robbing them of property they already owned.

Further, the Cook’s Bottom challenge had already pitted the Accompong

against the taxman. The Jamaican government tried to offer the community services in

return for their taxes but the Maroons had resisted this incursion on their sovereignty.

They must have asked themselves whether declaring war would be in the only way to

dissuade the government from implementing its plan.

The Maroons, in protesting the seizure of two mules from Daniel’s property,

                                                                                                               51 Trouillot.

  143  

simply argued that the treaty barred the government from collecting taxes from the

community and that “[w]e will not break the Peace & we trust that the public will not .

. .”52 While the Colonel and his Council did not say that they would breach the peace,

they implied that they would be willing to defend themselves. The government had

enough institutional memory of the Maroon Wars to take this statement seriously,

exactly the lesson the government should have taken from the Maroon Wars,

embodied in the placemaking narrative about Peace Cave. Knowing that the

community could display such force justified the Accompong ignoring Jamaican

legislative pronouncements and undermined the importance of remembering the Land

Allotment Act.

The silence connected with the Land Allotment Act presents another problem,

namely that they could be feigning silence about Land Allotment Act narratives.

Taking what other Maroons stated at face value, one might think this silence is not

only towards outsiders, but also within the community, a practice called dodging.53

This interpretation suggests members of the Colonel’s council, all people with whom I

met during my stays in Accompong, had intentionally declined sharing information

about the Land Allotment Act and the challenges it posed to the community. I had

come against an impenetrable wall of secrecy. Yet, there are also community members                                                                                                                52 Rowe, "Letter to H. Coke Concerning the Seizure of Accompong Mules, September 21, 1882," 1B/5/76/33/3 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 53Kenneth Bilby (an anthropologist who extensively studied Jamaica’s Maroon communities) defines dodging as “to evade and/or hide from (the term refers not just to skillful avoidance of invasive questions, but to any kind of calculated evasion or trickery, any act of ‘hiding.’ Whether for self-defense or personal gain)” Bilby, 477. Beyond this definition, Bilby describes the challenges that outsiders face when trying to get information from any of the Maroon groups which means that outsiders face “an unpenetrable wall of secrecy . . . [through] a complex set of strategies of evasion . . .” ibid., 369.

  144  

who may not have known about these land conflicts and also met with dodging

themselves.

Some of the current sensitivity about the Jamaican government and land is

connected to the Jamaican government trying to mine the cockpits for bauxite, a move

the Accompong reject because the cockpits are sacred land: it is the terrain over which

they fought the Maroon Wars and established themselves as a community. As such,

the cockpits are treaty-granted land, which means only the Accompong community

has the authority to grant mining rights to it. Silence about the Land Allotment Act,

particularly to outsiders, could reflect that the Accompong clearly understand the

threat the Land Allotment Act posed to the community; they could have lost Maroon

land.

The Attempt to Remove Military Service As An Obstacle to Tax Collection (1883)

Rev. Stuart thought that the Jamaican government should not have wasted time

trying to collect taxes from the Accompong because they did not have the resources to

pay them. Accompong soil was not productive, and the Accompong could not grow

enough crops to sell and earn income to support themselves from the land.54 A

government employee, in response to Rev. Stuart’s efforts with the community,

openly wondered if the Accompong would change locations so that they could receive

better government services and then assimilate into the general population.55 He

suggested that the government could issue a proclamation excepting all of the Maroon

                                                                                                               54 Stuart, "Letter to the Colonial Secreatary's Office About Accompong Taxes, March 28, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 55 Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Concerning the Possibility of Moving the Accompong, March 28, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  145  

groups from military service.56

So the government seriously considered the option of moving the Accompong

to fertile land closer to other Jamaicans with the goal of providing better government

services. The government openly admitted that moving the Accompong away from

treaty land was designed to undermine the Accompong’s argument that they would not

have to pay taxes simply for the reason that they were Maroons.57 If they did not live

with Maroons, they would no longer see themselves as Maroons and would be merged

into the general population.58

Meanwhile, the Proclamation excepting the Maroons from military service had

been drafted in accordance with the terms of the Land Allotment Act.59 In addition to

stating that the Accompong did not have to provide any special services to the

military, the Proclamation also reiterated that they were “entitled to all the rights and

privileges and immunities of British subjects in as ample a manner as any other people

in this Island without distinction of race or color.”60

The Jamaican government drafted the Proclamation to comply with one of the

Accompong’s terms for paying taxes: that they no longer serve with the Jamaican

military when called. However, Governor Musgrave, who drafted it, engaged in

                                                                                                               56 AM, "Note from Government Employee Discussing the Ease of Moving the Accompong, March 30, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 57 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to J. Stuart Concerning Moving the Accompong and Taxes, April 2, 1833," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 58 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to the Director of Public Works About Avaialable Land to Move the Accompong To, April 2, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 59Unidentified, "Employee Note Concerning the Draft Proclamation, April 2, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.This note sets the parameters of the Proclamation and the final terms. 60 HMH, "Employee Note Justifying the Proclamation with the Land Allotment Act, April 11, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  146  

double speak, writing

it has been brought to my notice that notwithstanding the Acts above referred to, the Maroons of Accompong believe that they are liable to military service in a way that others of her Majesty’s Subjects in the Island are not; And whereas I deem it expedient that this belief should be removed; Now therefore I do hereby proclaim and declare that the Maroons never have been and are not now liable to perform military service, except such as might be required of any of her Majesty’s Subjects within the Island . . .”61

The Maroons had all of the privileges and immunities of British Subjects, but British

subjects had to serve in the military whenever the Crown dictated it. The Proclamation

did not mean that the Accompong no longer needed to serve in the military; it simply

meant that they would serve if and when Jamaicans served. The Accompong also

understood that nothing really changed with the issuance of the Proclamation because

they had all of the “privileges and immunities of British Subjects” and therefore saw

no need to pay taxes.

Double speak was only one problem the Jamaican government faced if they

thought the proclamation could bridge their differences with the Accompong. The

government’s demands were peculiar given the historical importance the Accompong

placed on the treaty. The Accompong had drawn in the Jamaican government to

renegotiate the treaty, tinkering with its terms so that both sides could live with the

document. Forcing the Jamaican government to renegotiate the terms of the treaty

undermined the force of the Land Allotment Act because they recognized the

importance of the treaty. The only way for the Jamaican government to proceed with

the Accompong population was by (1) rejecting the authority of the Land Allotment                                                                                                                61 Anthony Musgrave, "Proclamation Exempting Maroons from Military Service, April 16, 1883, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  147  

Act; (2) acknowledging the weight of the treaty as the document that governed their

relationship; and (3) mutually changing the terms of that agreement.

In its enthusiasm about merging the Maroon population in with the rest of the

Blacks, the Jamaican government failed to grapple with the weight the 1739 treaty

carried with the Accompong. While the Accompong beguiled the Jamaican

government into thinking that renegotiating the treaty was possible, they never

relinquished their belief that the treaty was a permanent, unchanging document to be

adhered to regardless of historical context.62 Hence, the Accompong’s insistence that

the treaty did not authorize the Accompong’s paying taxes and required them to

provide military assistance to the Jamaican government, if needed, was never

fundamentally shaken. Regardless of what the government attempted to negotiate,

they would never agree to terms that would upend their commitment to backing the

Jamaican government with military power or not agree to pay taxes to the Jamaican

government. Ultimately, the importance and power of the Land Allotment Act was

diminished in the negotiations about taxes between the government and the

Accompong because both parties were forced to contend with their interpretation of

the treaty and in its relevance to the Accompong population.

Enforcing Tax Collections From the Accompong (1883)                                                                                                                62The method on which the treaties were sworn to reflect yet anther placemaking narrative among the Accompong, that the British and Kojo cut their skin, mixed blood and rum in a calabash, and then agreed to the treaty. As the blood and rum could not be separated, neither could the connection between the British and the Maroons and the agreements made between the two parties. Bilby argues “[f]rom the Maroons’ perspective, the sacred basis of the treaties has remained unchanged, partly because oath-taking procedures similar to those used during the eighteenth century remain embedded in Maroon religion and social practice.” Bilby: 677. Kopytoff argued “the sacred character of The Treaties is evident in the Maroon belief that they can never be undone, that they are ‘blood treaties’ that cannot simply be altered by legal means.” Kopytoff: 59.

  148  

When the Jamaican government sent the Proclamation to London for the Prime

Minister’s approval it admitted the political challenges it faced in Jamaica that pushed

them to try to collect taxes from the Maroons. Governor Musgrave stated that “I

should add that the question of their liability to pay taxes is not of financial importance

as the people are poor and few in number . . . the matter is rather one of principle as

there is some jealousy on the part of the other negroes at the supposed privileges of the

Maroons.”63 The issue of collecting taxes from the Maroons, he asserted, was because

the other “negroes” wanted to make sure that all “negroes” paid their taxes and could

not understand why the Maroon population would be exempt from that duty. The

Jamaican government developed a regressive taxation system so that the burden of tax

revenues fell on the portion of the population who did not own land or have significant

income.64 Politically, taxation was a key issue for both Jamaica’s Blacks and the

Maroons. We know that African-heritage Jamaicans made reduced taxes part of their

political project because the one representative the Crown appointed to advocate for

Jamaica’s Black population was a religious figure who consistently challenged

particular taxes as applied to Jamaica’s poor.65 The Accompong Maroons also

grappled with the tax challenges of their own, ensuring that the treaty-enshrined

protection from tax payments continued.

                                                                                                               63Alexander Musgrave, "Letter to the Earl of Derby Concerning the Circumstances to Issue the Proclamation, April, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica. 64 Holt, 202. 65Council, "Meeting of the Legislative Council - 27th Day of March 1895, March 27, 1895," 1B/59/13, Kingston, Jamaica.

  149  

By April 16, 1883, the Jamaican governor had signed the Proclamation.66 A

copy was sent to Rev. Stuart, whom the government relied upon to explain the

document and its implications to the Maroons, assuming his discussion would include

an explanation of the government’s stance on taxing their communities. The

government also continued to seek land suitable for relocating the Accompong with

the hope that they would be put “under civilizing and progressive influences,”67 a

policy also directed toward the Black peasantry. If the Accompong moved, they

would, like Jamaica’s Black peasants

Be allowed a place in ‘civilised’ society provided that they rejected their mental construction’ and their African religious world view . . . African religion or any other manifestation of non-European culture was the surest sign of barbarism. The noble savage was now pointed on the path of salvation and perfection of self by turning his back on his gods, and seeing God face to face.”68

The government had no doubt then, that after being Christianized, Maroons would

forsake their group lands, pay taxes, and work on plantations for the benefit of the

Crown.

The government remained tested by enforcing tax collection because the

Accompong were still determined not to pay. The frustration about collecting taxes

grew more palpable when some White Jamaicans insisted that the treaty should remain

the supreme document in dealing with the Maroons and thought that taxing the

Accompong under the treaty was unthinkable. In the midst of the government

                                                                                                               66Musgrave, "Proclamation Exempting Maroons from Military Service, April 16, 1883, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 67Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Concerning the Possibility of Moving the Accompong, March 28, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 68 Bryan, 280.

  150  

determining incentives they should present to the Accompong to cajole them into

paying taxes, a White Jamaican named Stratchan wrote the government encouraging

them not to collect taxes at all. The writer argued that the Maroons were both loyal to

the Queen and necessary for Jamaica’s security and continued to encourage Jamaica to

use them as a buffer military force between the “negroes” and White Jamaicans.

Betraying his fear of the “negroes,” he argued that the Maroons’ neutrality “in case of

a rebellion be disadvantageous of the White population, and a serious blow to the

prosperity of the colony.”69 The Maroons had proven their loyalty to the Queen, but

furthermore, he pointed to the importance of the treaty.70 While there is no way to

ascertain the degree to which his opinions represented of White Jamaican society, the

Land Allotment Act was not regarded by some pocket of White Jamaicans as the rule

of law for Maroons. The government maintained that it was “always ready to receive

any member of the [Maroon] community,”71 including the “Captain.” The government

did not want White Jamaicans to take the Maroons seriously as seen by its placing the

title Captain in quotation marks.

Some White Jamaicans were still concerned that the Jamaican government had

every intention of going after the Maroons for taxes, whether they were in arrears, or

for newer taxes. Stratchan again requested that the government not tax the

Accompong’s lands because of the treaty. He further emphasized that the Maroons did

                                                                                                               69 Stratchan, "Letter to General Gamble Concerning Not Taxing the Maroons, June 6, 1888," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Clarendon Parish. 70 Ibid. 71Unidentified, "Comments on Stratchan's Second Letter About the Accompong, July 6, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston.

  151  

not want to “mingle” with the peasants, evidence that Maroons had no intention of

becoming “negroes“ as formulated by the Jamaican government.72

Yet, the government continued to examine the legal issues concerning past

taxes. Its continual seeking of legal opinions about the matter weakened their ability to

leverage the taxation power of the colonial state. It raised the underlying question of

whether taxing the Accompong community was legitimate at all. However, the legal

authority to tax was meaningless without enforcing tax collections. By June 1883, the

government recognized that if it did not enforce tax collection, it would demonstrate

how weak it really was.73

The Proclamation did not explicitly address the issue of taxes. It was designed

to remove a Maroon objection to paying taxes, military service. Because collecting

taxes could possibly require shedding blood, any decision to force the collection of

taxes from the Accompong would be a “grave mistake” and for such small amounts

would also make the government look weak.74 The government considered not

enforcing tax payment because it was occupied with identifying lands on which to

relocate the Accompong so that they would be settled with “the serene population

when they would like others of their race.”75 However, any attempt to relocate the

Accompong would have been perceived as overreach by the Accompong because of

the treaty. The treaty identified where the Maroon community was to be located, and                                                                                                                72 Stratchan, "Letter to the Hon. Noel Walker Requesting That the Government Not Force the Accompong to Pay Taxes, July 26, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Medina, Jamaica. 73 JSP, "Letter Questioning Whether the Jamaican Govenrment Will Enforce the Collection of Taxes, June 21, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica. 74Unidentified, "Letter Arguing That the Jamaican Government Should Not Enforce Tax Collections against the Accompong, August 16, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica. 75Ibid.

  152  

that was not to change over time, no matter the condition of the soil.76

By September 1883, the British Prime Minister sent a letter directing the

Jamaican government not to collect taxes from the Maroons, but to try to move them

to other lands.77 The Jamaican government acceded and decided to talk to Rev. Stuart

to help the Accompong evaluate where they really saw their interests and to consider

the better possibility of moving to different territory.78 However, the government was

having little success finding a suitable parcel of land. The Prime Minister’s decision

unraveled the Land Allotment Act as the rule of law with the Maroon groups. London

was opposed to any actions that would agitate the Maroons, because they had a policy

of not disturbing Maroon communities.79 Finally, the tax policies of the Jamaican

government were further obstructed when they could not find a suitable piece of land

for the Accompong to move to. Hence, the objective of finding land located closer to

the Black population and forcing them to assimilate into their communities as a means

of collecting tax revenue also failed.

Conclusion

Ultimately, taxation failed as a way of merging the Accompong community

with the Black population. Seizing the Accompong’s land would have required an

unaffordable use of force both by the Jamaican government and from England.

Further, the Prime Minister’s office had a policy of not upsetting the Accompong, so

                                                                                                               76 Brown, 120 - 121. 77 Earl of Derby, "Fullerswood, April, 1883," Letter, 1B/5/76/33/3 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 78 Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Agreeing to Earl of Derby's Proposal, October 20, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica. 79 Secretary, "Letter from Cso to Prederville, July, 1868," Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  153  

that the use of force to evict them from their property would have been untenable.

This tax dispute ended up reinforcing the legitimacy of the treaty and

weakening the power of the Land Allotment Act because not only was the Jamaican

government forced to try to renegotiate the treaty, but could not implement the

primary goal of the act; notably to try to get the Accompong to move, assimilate

themselves into the larger “negroe” population, and assume the “rights and privileges

of the Queen’s subjects” by accepting their tax burden.

In 1901, whether the Accompong paid taxes on their land and stock remained a

persistent issue: the Jamaican government was concerned that if someone had bought

land from Maroons in Scotts Hall they would owe back taxes.80 The government still

did not understand whether the Maroons were exempt from taxation. They argued that

tradition suggested that they were not. This conclusion stood contrary to what they had

had concluded earlier, that custom (tradition) had dictated that the Accompong and

other Maroon groups did not owe taxes for over 150 years and there would be no

basis, according to custom, for them to start paying taxes now. Ultimately, the

government pressed ahead with the tax question and the Maroons’ tax obligation.81

The Accompong still refused to pay.

                                                                                                               80M. T. Thompson, "Letter to the Collector General's Office and Back Taxes on Maroon Lands, June 21, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica.This letter is bizarre is that Maroon land has never been for sale. The context in which this question arose was not discussed in the document; however, over time, it seems clear that no Maroon group had ever sold anyone property. 81 WBB, "Internal Government Note Fleshing out Whether an Outsider Buying Maroon Land Would Owe Taxes, June 25, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica.

  154  

Chapter 5: The Fullerswood Land Dispute: the Rise of Indirect Rule (1884 – 1899)

The Fullerswood land dispute (1884 - 1899) features the challenges the

Accompong faced when they sought to occupy land that was both non-contiguous to

Accompong and privately owned. Using their placemaking narratives about

Accompong boundaries combined with an explicit narrative about lawful inheritance,

they justified storming onto Fullerswood’s private land holdings and demanded them

under the treaty.1 The Accompong also cut down trees for their own use as another

means of asserting control and dominion over Fullerswood.2

Eventually, the government charged the Maroons who were cutting down trees

with trespass. It was frustrated because the Accompong refused to help arrest Maroons

making incursions onto private property. Police and the colonial government both

agreed that the Maroons needed to be contained within their treaty-defined borders;

however, they disagreed about how to do this. The Colonial Office directed the

Jamaican government not use force to vacate the Maroons from Fullerswood. Instead,

it requested diplomatic reliance on headmen to enforce the borders and ensure

compliance with the law. The government selected headmen from the Maroon

Colonels who concurrently served both roles; however, these headmen held no sway

with the community so long as they disregarded the community’s bidding. At the same

                                                                                                               1 James C. A. Brian, Captain Thomas Rowe, and Captain John R. Foster, "Letter to the Surveyor General's Office, 3 July, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica; Clerk Henry Ezekiel Wright and Colonel Isaac Miles, "Letter to Sir Augustus Hemming, March, 1898," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 2 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable Chamberlain, 13 January, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  155  

time the government tried to discredit the Accompong community and subvert their

political structures. It tried to keep the Accompong within their borders. Most notably,

it did not try to dismantle the Accompong community. The Fullerswood land dispute

demonstrated how both the Accompong and the government selected legal

interpretations that best bolstered their objectives. Yet the Accompong did not succeed

in winning Fullerswood because it was not Crown land that lay idle, but rather the

private land Jamaican citizens who were not willing to cede.

The Dunn’s Parcel of Fullerswood

Fullerswood is located in Southwest Jamaica in St. Elizabeth parish, less than

five miles to the south and east of the Black River. Many Whites owned various

parcels that comprised Fullerswood. It incorporated several different uses including a

park, a private estate, pastures, and pen. It included homes, fields where animals could

roam, and also a forest-like topography where trees grew abundantly. In the eighteenth

century, the park, located close to the seacoast, included 2,113 acres and ponds.3

Further, the pastures also comprised many acres: the Fullerswood Pen alone had over

seventy acres and all of it was privately owned. Fullerswood was not Crown Land,

indeed it was privately owned, as represented on maps from the seventeenth,

eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries (see figure 4).4

                                                                                                               3 Some maps of Fullerswood date back to 1673. Fullerswood Park, "1673," St. E. 1062, Kingston, Jamaica. 4 Fullerswood Estate, "", St. E. 30, Kingston, Jamaica.

  156  

 

Figure 4. Fullerswood Park.5

Fullerswood was a much more usable area of land than Cook’s Bottom,

described as rocky and clayey. Nevertheless, both white Jamaicans and the Jamaican

government feared the Accompong would claim Fullerswood based on the same

arguments that they posed for Cook’s Bottom, including that the Accompong could

legally possess land by adverse possession. Jamaica’s land laws supported in perverse

ways the Accompong’s acquisition of land by adverse possession.

Nevertheless, the Accompong’s desire to restore what they believed was their

full complement of land continued. On 12 March 1894, residents of the Fullerswood

area wrote to their Legislative Council representative that the Accompong Maroons

                                                                                                               5 Fullerswood Park, "1673," St. E. 1062, Kingston, Jamaica.

  157  

were claiming authority to cut down trees from Fullerswood because they were

entitled to use Crown Lands an argument for land acquisition that, if legitimate,

followed the Cook’s Bottom precedent.6 William, John, and James Dunn hoped that

their legislative representative, Mr. Farquharson, would both keep the Accompong

within the borders of “a certain portion of land which has been surveyed out and given

to them” and prevent them from taking “valuable lumber trees” and deforesting the

land. While they explicitly referred to how the Accompong used treaty lands and

perhaps Cook’s Bottom, the residents were concerned they would do the same with

Fullerswood. Further, the Dunns emphasized that the Accompong should be kept on

the lands to which they were entitled “by treaty.”7 They understood that the applicable

law was the treaty, an understanding that questioned the legitimacy of the Land

Allotment Act not only in the eyes of the Maroons, but also in the eyes of White

Jamaicans. Even White Jamaican society recognized that the Maroons would not cede

to assimilating with the Black peasantry anytime soon.

The Dunns worried that the Accompong had been trying to adversely possess

the land again: “[u]nder the cloak, as they apart, of instructions from some previous

Governor, or person in authority, to take charge and make use of unpatented and

Crown Lands.”8 Plainly put, the Accompong thought the Governor allowed them to

use Fullerswood. The Maroons, based on the resolution of Cook’s Bottom, assumed

that Fullerswood was also Crown Lands and available for their use by tacit agreement

                                                                                                               6 William Dunn, John Dunn, and James Dunn, "Letter to the Honorable J.M. Farquharson, Member of the Legislative Council, 12 March, 1894," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid.

  158  

with the Government. More boldly, they assumed, strategically, that they rightfully

owned those lands because what belonged to the Jamaican government belonged to

them. Contrary to orders from the Colonial Office, Blacks continued to squat on land

with the intention of owning it for themselves. Ultimately, responses to the

Accompong’s incursions on Fullerswood came from the police, the Colonial

Secretary’s Office, the Surveyor General’s Office, and the Governor’s Office, all of

which had much more experience in dealing with Maroon populations than the

Assembly. Solutions for Jamaica’s White population vis-a-vis the Maroons were not

to be found politically through the Legislative Council, but in the government agencies

that historically dealt with the Maroons.

Less than one month later, Thomas Harrison, the surveyor who was involved

with the Cook’s Bottom incident, wrote that he was concerned that the Maroons would

continue to cause trouble. Mr. Harrison’s thoughts about Fullerswood were significant

as the government increasingly relied on people with expertise handling the Maroon

population. Harrison’s argument was radical. He asserted that there were no Maroons,

that the Maroons had no authority to protect government lands; and finally, that the

government owned no lands around the Fullerswood area, echoing his response to the

challenges at Cook’s Bottom.9 He wrote that “[t]here are no Maroons left, the people

who call themselves Maroons are the negroes who intermarried with the former

                                                                                                               9Government Surveyor Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Thomas Gray, Esq., 9 April, 1894," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. Surveyor Harrison did not betray this line of thinking when he did the survey of Accompong that the community hoped would include Cook’s Bottom. The most critical statement that he made was “if it is deemed advisable to extend the limits of their land, the only thing that can be done for them is to make lawful their present occupation fo the Crown Land.” ibid.

  159  

Maroons.”10 Mr. Harrison implied that their claims to Fullerswood were bogus by

concluding that “[t]hey are a bad lot & the neighbour should look sharp that they do

not trespass on their lands.”11 Further, he claimed that they had ceased to exist because

the Land Allotment Act had merged them with the “negroe” population. Finally,

Fullerswood was deemed not to be Crown land, because “the Govt. has no land in the

quarter.”12

Second, if the Accompong thought that they were protecting government

lands, “[t]hey [the Accompong] have no authority whatever to protect Govt Lands.”13

The Accompong had confused land use with protection: they could use Cook’s

Bottom, but they did not have the authority to protect it or any other government land.

Finally, Harrison stated explicitly that Sir John Grant, the former governor, had given

the Accompong permission to occupy Cook’s Bottom, the resolution to that land

claim. No government could give permission to occupy lands on Fullerswood because

there were no public lands. Granting permission to use Cook’s Bottom resolved that

adverse possession problem, but that solution was not available for Fullerswood.

Nevertheless, this did not mean that the Maroons could not try to claim

Fullerswood by adverse possession; public or private land ownership was not a barrier.

What distinguished the Accompong’s attempt to take Fullerswood from Cook’s

Bottom was that the private owners of the land complained and interrupted the

Accompong’s open and notorious use of Fullerswood. No adverse possession

                                                                                                               10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

  160  

compromise was available because the owners of the parcels refused to cede their use

and ownership of it.

The Accompong felling trees, for example, was characteristic of making

claims to Fullerswood for themselves. With Fullerswood, the Dunns claimed that the

Accompong had defied their insistence to leave the land. Without the owner’s tacit or

explicit permission to use Fullerswood, the Accompong had no ability to claim

continuous use of the Dunn’s land: “they have within comparatively [sic] recent years

been entering on our Properties, destroying our valuable lumber trees, working and

using our Lands and defying us, using such threats of intimidation as to make our

lands of no value from fear of boding danger.”14 Nevertheless, the Accompong

continued to try to take Fullerswood, frustrating the government’s attempt to prevent

them from adversely possessing land.

Trespass at Fullerswood and the Rule of Law (Judicial Branch)

By April 1895, Robert Stone’s Accompong family and some supporters cut

down logwood in a different part of Fullerswood, a parcel of land not owned by the

Dunns. The Accompong claimed the property belonged to them because it was

assumed to be part of the overlooked treaty-owned land. Further, cutting logwood

established an open and notorious use of Fullerswood.15 This time, Mr. Salmon, a

member of the Legislative Council who owned this parcel of Fullerswood, turned to

the court system to keep the Accompong off of his land, thereby interrupting any

                                                                                                               14 Dunn, Dunn, and Dunn, "Letter to the Honorable J.M. Farquharson, Member of the Legislative Council, 12 March, 1894," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 15 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable Chamberlain, 13 January, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  161  

potential for the Accompong to make a claim to his part of Fullerswood by adverse

possession.

Mr. Salmon filed a claim for trespass, an unlawful entry on someone else’s

land with the threat of violence.16 Mr. Salmon had not given the Accompong

permission to come onto his land for any purpose including cutting down trees for

their own use. A court’s ruling on Salmon’s behalf would support the police force

taking any necessary action to keep the Accompong out and deny them the legal right

to use or possess Fullerswood after requesting an official injunction against the

Maroons.17

The police had permission to issue warrants for trespassers. Indeed, it was said,

“Robert Stone, with members of his family and some supporters [illegally] entered one

part of the outlying Fullerswood lands.”18 Three Maroons were arrested, brought

before a judge and reprimanded about the consequences they would face if they

continued to use Fullerswood.19 The court had many remedies at its disposal and

decided on issuing a reprimand.

The Second Maroon Wars provided a reason why the court was reluctant to do

more than reprimand the Accompong. It did not want to reignite conflicts with

Maroon groups. In 1795, when two Trelawney Maroons were presumed to have stolen

a pig from a neighboring plantation and were punished by both slaves and the

                                                                                                               16 Steven H. Gifis, "Trespass," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984). 17 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable Chamberlain, 13 January, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

  162  

plantation staff, Trelawney Maroons declared war. Under the Trelawney’s

interpretation of the treaty, no one from outside the community had authority to punish

any Maroon and that punishment violated the explicit terms of the treaty. The

consequences for outsiders punishing Maroons were too great.

Jamaican government employees and colonial officials were concerned that if

it tried this case, they would provoke another war, an outcome to avoid at all costs. J.

Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, requested a report on interactions with the

Maroons because he had received “intelligence from Kingston [that] an insurrection

has broken out among the Maroons of St. Elizabeth.”20 A letter sent to Jamaica’s

Governor Chamberlain not only described the specific facts connected with “a family

belonging to the Maroon settlement at Accompong in St. Elizabeth, to a part of a

property named Fullerswood in that Parish,” but also explicitly detailed a diplomatic

path out of this conundrum with the Accompong, namely that “it [would be] advisable

to send the Colonial Secretarys Office to point out to the people the gravity of the

offence they were alleged to have committed . . .”21 Direct confrontations between the

police and the Accompong could come too close to warfare and were discouraged.

The government could best avoid war with the Accompong if they adhered to the 1739

treaty and refrained from punishing Maroons in the government’s judicial system. The

government then reinforced the “disabilites” faced by the Maroons vis-à-vis the

formerly enslaved and undermined its own efforts to integrate Maroons into the island

                                                                                                               20 J. Chamberlain, "Letter to the Government of Jamaica, 25 February, 1896," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 21 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable Chamberlain, 13 January, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  163  

population. Hence, the power of the public transcript was diminished by one arm of

the Jamaican government and made the government’s attempt to apply the rule of law

to the Accompong incursions on land even more difficult.

Among those Maroons not simply reprimanded, more than one who were

supposed to face the judge did not obey the summons and were tried, convicted, and

fined in absence.22 During the five years of incursions on Fullerswood, this was the

only interaction with the courts that has survived in the archival record. The judicial

system failed to hold the Accompong accountable for trespassing on Fullerswood and

failed to stop the trespass. At this point, the government turned to diplomacy to

encourage the Accompong to cease and desist their efforts to take Fullerswood for the

community.

Diplomacy with the Accompong

On July 3, 1895, the Accompong made another claim on Fullerswood, this

time based not on access to Crown Lands, but instead, on Maroon history and their use

of the land. The Accompong asserted that they had long used the land to secure water

for the community. Like the farming claim they made for Cook’s Bottom, they hoped

that their use of Fullerswood would be ample evidence of why this parcel of

Fullerswood belonged to them.

Just in case, the Maroons were prepared to take a different part of Fullerswood,

owned by Mr. Salmon, by force. On July 31, 1895 twenty Accompong arrived

                                                                                                               22 Ibid.

  164  

carrying cutlasses to guarantee access to the land.23 The Maroons were willing to use

force because one claimed that his grandparent left him the title, a novel claim.24 That

the Accompong were willing to fight for land illuminates a hidden transcript that

delegitimized the rule of law. In the narratives connected to the First Maroon War, one

lesson was that Maroons knew how to fight and would do so to maintain that which

they were entitled. Hence, making sure that Fullerswood stayed within the community

became one instance where it made sense to act upon this hidden transcript and let the

Jamaican government know that they thought warfare was warranted to win

Fullerswood for the community.

At the same time the Accompong directly challenged the rule of law, they

concurrently gave it legitimacy by making arguments about legal norms for land usage

and claiming inheritance rights. By doing so, the Accompong indicated that they knew

the strongest arguments they would have for Fullerswood would be based in the

Jamaican legal system, thereby acknowledging Jamaica’s land-holding regime. The

Accompong believed their use was enough to give them ownership rights, based on

adverse possession. Of course, the owners of Fullerswood had interrupted the

continuous use, a standard requirement for making an adverse possession claim.25 The

Accompong’s assertion that a community member’s grandmother left them title to

                                                                                                               23 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter from Jameson Calder to Constabulary Office, 31 July, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 24 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter to the Inspector General, 19 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 25 As demonstrated in the remainder of the chapter, adverse possession, while the weakest argument the Accompong had for claiming Fullerswood, was consistently asserted by them to claim Fullerswood.

  165  

Fullerswood made the Jamaican government take pause before dismissing the

Accompong’s claim.

Colin Liddell, one of the government surveyors, checked the title and argued

that the title was clear for over one-hundred years and therefore, Mr. Salmon had legal

possession of the estate.26 As a result, the Accompong’s claims for land, under the

Jamaican legal system, were illegitimate, or not based on sources of law that justified

placing Fullerswood under their ownership.

Nevertheless, by August 17, 1895, the Accompong had once again entered and

claimed Fullerswood. This time, however, they entered Fullerswood without

threatening violence or disturbance, and provided another signal that they were

unprepared to relinquish their assertion that they legitimately owned Fullerswood.27

On August 19, the Jamaican government reiterated its position about the status of

Fullerswood and agreed that the title was clear and it was land excluded from the

treaty. Hence, not even the treaty, which theoretically had been delegitimized, could

justify the Accompong’s ownership of Fullerswood.

Still, the government realized that they would have difficulty in convincing the

Maroons to believe them, so they asked Reverend Stuart, an official with the Church

of Scotland, one of the churches working in Accompong, to explain to the Maroon

                                                                                                               26 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter from Jameson Calder to the Inspector General, 19 August 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 27 Calder, "Letter to the Inspector General, 19 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  166  

population the status of Fullerswood.28 Reverend Stuart understood that any future

incursions would be trespassing and that Maroons caught trespassing would be subject

to arrest, and the full force of the rule of law.29

On August 28, Reverend Lea, the Reverend assigned to Accompong

implemented the government’s suggestions and met with members of the leadership

council. During this meeting, the Maroons reiterated their arguments based on

inheritance and adverse possession.30 Subsequently, the Maroons spoke with Inspector

Calder, the police officer who was engaged in the criminal proceedings associated

with trespass on Fullerswood, who convinced them to hire a lawyer. The Accompong

were prepared to take the title to Inspector Calder, but Reverend Lea stopped them and

sent a letter clarifying the matter to the government. He characterized this matter as

one involving one or two Maroons so that the entire community should not be held

responsible for this challenge.31

Two questions arise with Reverend Lea’s involvement: First, why did the

Jamaican government decide to have the Reverend try to resolve this matter, and;

second, why did the Reverend not execute the will of the government. When the

Jamaican government decided to use the Church of Scotland to convince the

Accompong to back off their claims to Fullerswood, it chose a diplomatic route,                                                                                                                28 Unidentified, "Letter to the Inspector General of Police, 19 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Kingston. 29 Unidentified, "Letter to Mr. Stuart, 26 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 30 W. Scrivener Lea, "Letter to Mr. Stuart, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. Reverend Stuart had relinquished direct contact with the Maroons and assigned Reverend Lea to resolve the issue. 31 W. Scrivener Lea, "Letter to Retirement Manse, 28 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  167  

meaning that the government refrained from direct meetings between the

Accompong’s political leaders and the Jamaican government’s political leaders.

Instead, they had an individual who could communicate their position and try to

massage the situation with the Accompong without upsetting the Accompong so much

that they would consider warfare. Given the recent examples of Maroons of going to

Fullerswood bearing cutlasses and longstanding Maroon histories of war and rebellion,

the Jamaican government feared that the Accompong would interpret a meeting with

one of its representatives as an act of provocation.32

Yet Reverend Lea did not accomplish all that the government hoped reporting

that he discouraged the Accompong from giving Inspector Calder the title once they

received it.33 He believed in the legitimacy of the Accompong’s land claim, contrary

to the Jamaican government and White settlers.34 Finally, Reverend Lea argued that

the entire Accompong community should not be held responsible for the incident

based on the actions of one or two Maroons.35 He closed his letter to Reverend Stuart

by saying “try to do your best for them.”36 Reverend Lea had no intention of pushing

the Accompong to adopt the government’s position.

Still, the Accompong had not secured any more of Fullerswood than they had

one year previously. The lack of progress left them undeterred. The diplomatic route

                                                                                                               32  Dallas recounts a narrative where the government sought peace with the Windward Maroons (Mooretown/Charles Town/Scots Hall) after concluding a treaty with the Leeward group and how the first soldier sent to try to seek peace was massacred. Dallas, 71. 33 Lea, "Letter to Retirement Manse, 28 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid.

  168  

towards resolving the Fullerswood land conflict failed to bolster the government’s

position because Rev. Lea proved to be a flawed messenger. So convinced were the

Accompong of their legitimate ownership of Fullerswood that a mere two months

later, they reentered Fullerswood.

A group of Accompong Maroons Threaten to Take Laconia Mountain, Fall 1895

In fact, during fall of 1895, the Accompong made two more incursions onto

Fullerswood. On September 4, 1895, Major Stone led 25 – 30 Maroons there who

“intimated their intention of taking charge of that property . . . but . . . they did not

carry out their threat.”37 The police officer reporting on this incursion argued that “the

Maroons actually committed no trespass” probably because they were not threatening

violence.38 By October 1895, the Accompong cut down trees at Lacovia Mountain in

Fullerswood. The Police Inspector reported that fourteen Maroons came to make a

formal claim. He implored the Maroons to hire a lawyer and use the court system to

debate whether they had a legitimate claim to the land; however, they insisted on

simply felling trees. He referred to the fact that Mr. Salmon, the recorded owner of the

land, had already obtained an injunction from the Supreme Court and the Inspector

would post a notice about the injunction’s restraining them from cutting logwood from

                                                                                                               37 Inpsector General of Police, "Letter from the Inspector General of Police to the Inspector General's Office, 4 September, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 38 Ibid. Also recall the definition of trespass, the entering on someone else’s property using violence threatening to take the land. Gifis, "Trespass," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984).

  169  

the property. He was concerned that the Accompong would insist on resisting the

law.39

When the Accompong brought 25 – 30 members of their community to

Fullerswood, they sought to restore their broader understanding of Accompong’s

borders. This placemaking narrative reinforced their belief that warfare might be

necessary to win the rest of the Accompong’s land and that they would fight to win it.

Warfare frightened not only Fullerswood’s private landholders of, but also the

government officials who dealt with them.

Whites living in Jamaica were concerned about the Maroon’s ability to skirt

Jamaica’s legal regime. The Maroons’ past willingness to go to war for what they

wanted and assumed they were entitled to was all the evidence needed of the

communities’ alleged lawlessness, particularly in the context of Fullerswood. White

concerns about the Maroons and the rule of law was communicated to London in no

uncertain terms. As a result, the Privy Council started monitoring this situation.

Fears of Rebellion Spread to London

The reports concerning Fullerswood sparked concern in London about the

Maroons’ activities. By early 1896, members of the Privy Council were nervous that

another rebellion had broken out among the Maroons. Joseph Chamberlain, the

Colonial Secretary, wrote Jamaica’s governor, Sir Henry Arthur Blake, to receive

assurances that things were alright with the Maroons because private citizens had been

                                                                                                               39 J. B. Orrett, "Letter from J. B. Orrett to the Colonial Secretary's and the Surveyor General's Offices, 21 October, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  170  

writing to the Privy Council about their concerns.40 The conflicts between the

Accompong and the Jamaican government and title-holding owners were no longer

confined within the island’s borders. Outside supervision, beyond the scope of the

Governor and the Legislative Council, was thought necessary to deflate this problem.

The Privy Council’s primary concern was preventing warfare. Mr.

Chamberlain disclosed “that according to intelligence from Kingston an insurrection

has broken out among the Maroons of St. Elizabeth” a conclusion warranted by the

number of cutlass bearing Maroons trying to retake Fullerswood.41 However, in that

the Privy Council was concerned about Maroon insurrections, this exchange was also

evidence that the pubic transcript was frayed outside Jamaica’s borders. These dust-

ups with the Accompong demonstrated that the colonial government lacked the power

to enforce laws designed to integrate the Maroons into the general island population.

This perception triggered the Governor’s quick response to Chamberlain’s letter. He

wrote “There has not been any change in the policy of the Government towards the

Maroons . . .” and that “there is no present prospect of trouble . . .”42 Further, “I do not

think they would render very effected service [meaning as an internal military force as

they had just referred to the Morant Bay Rebellion]; but the general population are

afraid of them, and while, so far as I can judge, there is no present prospect of trouble,

there is no doubt that the presence of the Maroons as a distinct body would if troubles

                                                                                                               40 Chamberlain, "Letter to the Government of Jamaica, 25 February, 1896," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 41 Ibid. 42 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable J. Chamberlain M.P., 30 March, 1896," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  171  

were impending act as a wholesome restraint.”43 If the Accompong were trespassing

on others’ lands, the issue could “always be settled by a survey,” and so “it would not

be advisable to take any steps at present in the . . . curtailing of their present

privileges.”44

With the encouragement of the Privy Council, the Jamaican government had

temporarily abandoned its project of making the Maroons ”negroes” as it would be

helpful if they acted as a “distinct body.” Land problems, Fullerswood included, could

be resolved by conducting a survey to determine Accompong borders. The Privy

Council and the Jamaican Government decided that the Jamaican government would

cease implementing their goal of assimilating the Maroon populations into the Black

Jamaican population: “I say leave the Maroons as they are and encourage them in the

idea that they are by tradition the friends of the Government & have special privileges

as such. At the same time their land should be distinctly defined & they should be

made to feel that the law will not permit them to interfere with any other.”45 No longer

would the Land Allotment Act function as a public transcript of the Jamaican

government’s approach with the Accompong, or any Maroon group because the Privy

Council had repudiated its use and so the treaty’s primacy could once again be

asserted.

                                                                                                               43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 W.H.H.S., "Letter Circulating among the Privy Council, November 4, 1895," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), London.

  172  

The Governor’s office argued that Maroon activity had not jeopardized the

peace.46 Indeed, “a family of Maroons had claimed the property under a will alleged to

have been made by their grandparent. The owner applied to the Court and obtained an

injunction, which was served upon the trespassers who obeyed it at once. There was

no disturbance.”47 Another strategy was desperately needed by the Jamaican

government to quell these disturbances between the Accompong and the owners of

Fullerswood; a strategy that would also convince the Privy Council that they were

adhering to the treaty as the primary rule of law, but also give the government the

room needed to try to implement the Land Allotment Act at a later point regardless of

the Privy Council’s decision. In tandem with the British Empire’s goals of

implementing their rule upon the indigenous Africans in their newly acquired colonial

possessions and Africa, the Jamaican government turned to indirect rule.

Indirect Rule I

In mid-June of 1896, one of the Accompong, Henry Ezekiel Wright, wrote to

the Inspector of the Constabulary about a matter that concerned him, one not directly

connected with Fullerswood. Wright was concerned that the boys playing ball nearby

his home put his wife, who had a newborn, and their other young children at risk.

Wright implored the government to provide his family with protection against these

                                                                                                               46 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, 1896," 1B57333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 47 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable J. Chamberlain M.P., 30 March, 1896," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  173  

young boys.48 In this letter, he complained that Pelis Rowe, the “headman” for

Accompong was not providing the necessary protection.

Wright’s complaint to the Jamaican government was the first Jamaican

reference to headmen. Headmen were associated with the African continent after

European powers partitioned it during the 1884 Berlin Conference. What could the

situation with the Accompong have in common with the African colonies? Indeed,

after the British took hold of their colonial possessions, they had faced the problem of

using different means of governing the countryside and the towns, because of

resistance to direct rule: “indirect rule became the mode of governing the countryside,

[and] towns were subject to direct rule.”49 Further, within urban and rural populations,

there was a “division between a racialized rights-bearing citizenry and an ethnicized

subject population.”50 As discussed in chapter two, after emancipation, the formerly

enslaved, the majority of Jamaica’s population, were seen through the lens of race.

The Maroon populations frustrated government officials because they refused to

conform with the Government’s racial categorization of their community and so they

resisted the civilizing mission of emancipation. Hence, the Maroons continued to exist

as an ethnic group amongst the majority Black population.

For the Accompong, the colonial experience became mediated through their

own population through the use of headmen, a position created by the government and

                                                                                                               48 Henry Ezekiel Wright, "Letter from Colonel Wright to the Inspector of the Constabulary, 20 June, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 49 Mahmood Mamdani, "Historicizing Power and Responses to Power: Indirect Rule and Its Reform," Social Research 66, no. 3 (1999): 869. 50 Ibid., 867.

  174  

independent of Accompong’s political structure.51 Direct rule, Mamdani argues, was

set up by “creating a native elite that was granted a modicum of ‘civilized’ rights in

return for assimilating the culture of the colonizer.”52 In Jamaica, direct rule was not

so much targeted to an elite, but instead, was targeted towards the formerly enslaved.

Indeed, the work of trying to force the peasantry to become docile workers continued

well after the Morant Bay Rebellion, through a number of coercive means, only two of

them being the criminal justice and educational systems.53

While one component of indirect rule was that the ethnic minority had more

autonomy, this did not mean that direct rule was displaced. Indeed, the result of

indirect rule was that it “co-existed as two faces of power, direct rule a regime

guaranteeing rights to a racialized citizenry and indirect rule a regime enforcing

culture on an ethnicized peasantry.”54 The precise regime to be enforced on the

Maroon populations generally was the same one applied to Blacks, disenfranchising

them of wrongfully acquired lands. To do so, the Jamaican government reinforced its

understanding of the treaty: no mistakes existed and the Accompong would be limited

to their 1,500 acres and the remainder of claims for land would be illegal.

The government deemed this approach necessary because the Maroons refused

to listen to the government’s perspective on their land holdings.55 As seen in chapter 3

                                                                                                               51 Ibid., 870. 52 Ibid., 862. 53 Bryan, xi. 54 Mamdani: 862. 55 The government’s position on Maroon land holdings was not a single position between 1842 and 1895. It tried to change their land holdings in accordance with the Land Allotment Act and limit families to five acres with the rest reverting to the government. However, we see, in connection with the Fullerswood land claims that the government, under pressure from the Privy Council, decided that they

  175  

regarding Cook’s Bottom, the surveyor, Thomas Harrison, stated that he could not

give them all of the land they claimed in connection with Cook’s Bottom, he wrote

that they “appear disappointed because I could not give them all the land they wanted

and I had great difficulty, on that account, to get any of them to work the last three or

four days of the survey and then they would only give half a day . . .”56 The

Accompong would not cede to his interpretation of their borders, and therefore the

rule of law.

The Accompong also refused to listen to the government through their

religious representatives. Reverend Lea explained, probably without enthusiasm, the

situation they faced concerning Fullerswood. Instead the Accompong insisted that they

had a right, through inheritance, to Fullerswood, and the government’s efforts to shift

the Accompong’s stance towards Fullerswood were unsuccessful.

In this context, the headmen that the government appointed faced many

challenges, because he had little credibility within the Accompong community. Pelis

Rowe, the headman who was ineffective from the perspective of the Colonel, was one

of the first headmen mentioned in the government’s records.57 Wright, in his letter

about the threats to the safety of his wife and children, wrote that “I beg that you will

                                                                                                               would take the less ambitious approach of allowing the Maroons to stay on treaty-granted lands and instead try to prevent them from acquiring additional lands. 56 Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 57 Wright, Rowe, and Cawley are longstanding family names in the Accompong community and were often the people who assumed political leadership. Rowe was not the same person who had originally been charged with trespassing on Fullerswood, who was actually Thomas Rowe. Given the familial relationships in Accompong, Pelis and Thomas Rowe were most likely related, Rowe is one of the Accompong family names. Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008).

  176  

assist Headman Rowe and als [sic] teach him . . . to proform [sic] his duty upon these

people for my brother is acting Colonel . . .”58 The Accompong knew what role the

headmen were to serve in their community: they were to keep the community safe and

calm according to the Accompong’s standards, a job description at odds with the one

promoted by the Jamaican government whose project was to destabilize Maroon land

holdings. Secondly, based on the fact that Wright wrote in his letter that his brother

was Colonel, he expected a particular level of attention from Pelis Rowe because of

his status in the community. From his perspective, the Jamaican government simply

needed to do a better job teaching him how to discharge his role of Headman, such

training would be necessary because there were “no other spokesman . . . in

Accompong.”59 Therefore, he should act as an Accompong spokesperson to make sure

that the community benefited from having a headman.

While Fullerswood was not directly involved, the fact that there was a

headman is worth noting because of the government’s hope that, minimally, this

individual would resolve the Fullerswood land issues. The Accompong resisted this

message from government representatives and their Christian religious leader. The

Jamaican government changed the messenger once again.

Schism Between the Police and the Rest of the Jamaican Government

In December 1896, Inspector Pratt, the police officer involved with Colonel

Rowe’s tax petitions, was very concerned about the “threatening attitude” the

                                                                                                               58 Wright, "Letter from Colonel Wright to the Inspector of the Constabulary, 20 June, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 59 Ibid.

  177  

Accompong were taking concerning Fullerswood. The Inspector General asked

Inspector Pratt to arrest Accompong community members who had defied the warrant,

and instead of going himself, he sent ten officers in his place. Sergeant Cambridge,

one of the police officers, encountered resistance with the Accompong preventing

their community members from being arrested and described to Inspector Pratt the

challenges he faced with the arrests.60 Sergeant Cambridge characterized the

Accompong as behaving lawlessly and Inspector Pratt wanted to ensure that he

avoided “encouraging others to behave in the same lawless manner, as I have little

doubt they will do, if they are led to suppose that the Law can be defied with

impunity.”61 Avoiding arrest was one example of ignoring the law and this behavior

had to be stopped as it could predicate further resistance. Pratt proposed entering

Accompong with ten men “in case of resistance.”62 He requested forty mostly armed

men from the Inspector General to make the arrests.63 This is the first reference to

using force, as Inspector Pratt did not believe any other method would convince the

Maroons to follow Jamaican law.

The Jamaican government preferred a peaceful solution involving the

headmen. It rejected his proposal because they thought it would only aggravate the

situation.64 They argued “Mr. Roxburgh [another police officer], who has recently

                                                                                                               60 Unidentified, "Employee's Note Concerning Mr. Pratt's Not Arresting the Accompong Himself, " 1B576365 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 61 Acting Inspector Albert W. H. Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Concerning the Use of Force to Effectuate Arrest, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  178  

returned from Accompong thinks with me that if we wish to create a disturbance we

could not do better than adopt the Acting Inspector’s proposal.”65 The government

proposed using diplomacy to resolve the situation: “Mr. Pratt should keep touch &

work in harmony with Robert Wright (the “Colonel”) &, I the first instance at least,

should only take such measures to effect the arrest of these against whom warrants

have been issued as he would in the case of persons not resident in the so called

Maroon town.”66 It hoped that the Accompong’s political leader would participate in

arresting the Maroons who ran afoul of the law. Only if police officers worked in

tandem with Robert Wright would they have a chance of achieving a solution.

A challenge was that while the Jamaican government did not believe in the

legitimacy of the Accompong community, they expected the Colonel, Robert Wright,

to advance the government’s agenda of keeping the Accompong on their property and

preventing them from trying to acquire more land. Colonel, Wright’s title, appears in

quotation marks, an action that questioned his political legitimacy. The Jamaican

government did not question the legitimacy of the political process, but instead

whether Accompong, the town and community, were legitimate.

The government knew that the Accompong did not embrace the notion that

their community was illegitimate and might rebuff efforts at diplomacy. It then

recommended that Inspector Pratt take “a few men.”67 The priority had to be working

                                                                                                               65 Unidentified, "Employee's Note Concerning Mr. Pratt's Not Arresting the Accompong Himself, " 1B576365 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 66 Ibid. 67 Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Concerning Arresting Outstanding Maroons, 8 December, " 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  179  

with Accompong leaders stating that he should “endeavour to affect these arrests

securing the assistance of the maroon headmen.”68 The government also critiqued

Pratt’s approach in effectuating arrests in the past: he had sent a constable to handle

the arrest which posed a threat to the peace and opened the possibility of resistance

that would earn the ire of London’s political officials. The government argued that if

he had handled the matter himself, there may not have been any resistance in the first

place.69 If more men were necessary, he could request them, but should first work with

the headmen.70 Using force should be a last resort.71

On November 27, 1896, T. Laurence Roxburgh, a police officer, went to

Accompong to determine why Thomas Rowe resisted arrest. Pelis Rowe, the

headman, led Mr. Roxburgh to Thomas Rowe’s home where many Maroons were

gathered and engaged in “high talking.”72 Thomas Rowe was not home and avoided

arrest. Pelis Rowe was prepared to advise Thomas Rowe to turn himself in; yet the

constables were not ready to take Thomas Rowe by force. The following day, Thomas

Rowe stated that he had done nothing at Fullerswood for which he could be punished.

Further, he had not received a summons so he did not appear in court. He was willing

                                                                                                               68 Ibid. 69 Unidentified, "Note to Inspector Pratt Arguing That No Use of Force Is Appropriate to Arrest Maroons, 8 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 70 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter from the C.S.O. To the Inspector General of Police, 8 December 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 71 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to the Inspector General of Police, 14 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 72 “High talking” refers to talking trash, as would be said in U.S. colloquial parlance. Robin Kelley discussed the relevance of such speech in that while it generally was just talk, it could also increase tensions to the point of violence. Robin Kelley, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon, 1997). In this case, the Maroons were probably talking trash about the police inspector as he was trying to arrest Rowe.

  180  

to surrender when he raised enough money to pay the government imposed fine.73 Mr.

Roxburgh’s report reinforced that only Maroons who sympathized with Thomas Rowe

and not the entire community were involved with trespassing on Fullerswood.

Thomas Rowe’s arrest presented another issue: the police had a precedent of

overstepping their bounds with the Accompong. Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions

presented such an example: the Accompong refused to pay taxes to the Ministry of

Taxation and so the government decided to seize their stock.74 In response, members

of the Accompong community decided to take the stock back from the government.

Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions caused great consternation in the government because

the seizure of Maroon stock, “indiscreet to say the least of it and the concluding words

of the letter to the Custos of the Parish & others on 6718/92, will show that the Govt.

did not authorize the seizure.”75 The government was concerned that this action would

cause a backlash from the community. Finally, his comments explicitly state that the

Government did not authorize the seizure, suggesting that the police acted on their

own and such independent action could easily take a wrong turn; governmental

approval for punitive actions was necessary. Hence, due to the poor resolution of

Colonel Rowe’s tax petitions, there was no proper example of handling the

Accompong.

                                                                                                               73 T. Laurence Roxburgh, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary Concerning the Arrest of Maroons Connected to Fullerswood, 14 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 74 Acting Inspector Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 23 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 75 T.L.N., "Letter to the Hon. Colonial Secretary Concerning Resolving Fullerswood, 28 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  181  

Pelis Rowe had proven an unreliable headman and Inspector Prattt, in

response, kept insisting on hiring the current Colonel, Colonel Wright, to fill Rowe’s

place. On December 23, 1896, Pratt went to Accompong with Sergeant Cambridge

and three constables: he had used the smaller police force recommended by the

government and tried to work with both Colonel Wright and with Headman Rowe.76

Pratt wrote that he first tried to have a discussion with Colonel Wright about arresting

Thomas Rowe in the presence of “Captain” Anderson, “Lieutenant” Foster, and

“Sergeant Wright,” who was Colonel Wright’s brother, and they started arguing with

him about the case as soon as he appeared. Inspector Pratt then met with Colonel

Wright by himself who had agreed that “if he were paid by the Government he would

bring down both Rowe and Richard Foster to Black River . . .”77 Colonel Rowe wrote

to the government saying that he was unable to find Thomas Rowe, but “If I am paid

by Your Excellency I will bring down Thos Rowe and Richard Foster.”78 Pratt too

quickly agreed to this arrangement so the government responded that “[w]e cannot

enter upon any such arrangement with ‘Colonel’ Wright, we dont know what his price

is even . . .”79 The government’s squeamishness with Colonel Wright was further

                                                                                                               76 Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 23 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 77 Ibid. 78 Robt. J. Wright, "Letter to the Governor of Jamaica Negotiating Terms on Which He Would Turn Rowe over to the Authorities, 21 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 79 Unidentified, "Employee's Note Concerning Mr. Pratt's Not Arresting the Accompong Himself, " 1B576365 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  182  

inflamed when he claimed he could not find Thomas Rowe: what sort of political

leader would be unable to round up the members of such a small community.80

Accompong community members who accepted appointments as Headmen put

themselves at risk within the community because they were no longer trusted.

Inspector Pratt relied mostly on the recognized headman, Rural Headman Rowe;

however Rowe never provided much assistance in the matter. Indeed, Pratt reported

that Pelis Rowe put little effort in locating Thomas Rowe because “if he had attempted

to arrest Thomas Rowe and Richard Foster, that the other people would have killed

him, and that they gave him a severe beating for reporting that rum was sold in the

Town without a license.”81 Headmen who tried to implement the will of the Jamaican

government failed because they did not advance the will of the community, and Pelis

Rowe’s reporting illegal alcohol sales was one such example.

Ultimately, the Accompong Maroons avoided utlizing the Jamaican legal

system with Fullerswood or its related problems. The Accompong were unwilling to

go to jail for trespass as they sought solutions that avoided the criminal justice system,

evidenced in the difficulty the Jamaican government had in arresting, trying, and

punishing members of the community.

The Jamaican government, pressured from London, insisted that the police use

no force to resolve the challenges connected to Fullerswood. Yet, the police force was

willing to take actions that contradicted the dictates of the Privy Council, such as

                                                                                                               80 Wright, "Letter to the Governor of Jamaica Negotiating Terms on Which He Would Turn Rowe over to the Authorities, 21 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 81 Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 23 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  183  

trying to go to Accompong with forty officers. The police also tried to create alliances

with an unvetted Colonel to implement the will of the Jamaican government without

its permission. However, this was not the only schism seen at this point. Pelis Rowe,

the headman, did not cooperate in getting the government what it sought, which

challenged the effectiveness of indirect rule. Nevertheless, the Jamaican government

again made real efforts to assure that indirect rule worked.

Indirect Rule II

Colonels who became headmen lost their political role in Accompong because

they could not concurrently advance both the community’s and the government’s

interests. As a result, the Jamaican government lost its internal ally who could make

sure the community ceased their attempts to expand Accompong’s boundaries.

The government dismissed Pelis Rowe, the first rural headman, in November

1896. The Accompong had already removed Rowe as Colonel before the government

fired him. By February 19, 1897, Inspector Calder had no recommendation for Rowe’s

replacement, but hoped a new Headman would help secure “the arrest of the two

Maroons against whom warrants are issued.”82

The government warmed to appointing Colonel Wright because he “would be a

useful man & that his authority as Colonel would be increased by his apptmt. As the

Headman & the fact that he is also ‘Colonel.”83 So little regard did the Jamaican

government have for the political roles in the Accompong community that they

                                                                                                               82 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter to the Inspector General Concerning the Dismissal of Rural Headman Rowe, February 19, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 83 T.L.N., "Employee Note About Colonel Wright Being the Best Rural Headman, March 1, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  184  

thought that being a Headman would have increased a Colonel’s influence within the

community. The government was tone deaf to the challenges that Colonels faced when

doing the government’s bidding. Indeed, being a headman actually diminished the

level of authority Colonels had in the community.

Pelis Rowe wrote to the Governor’s office about his dismissal on April 21,

1897; the letter provides more information about the scope of the position and why a

Maroon would accept a Headman appointment. The overarching issue he addressed

was not being paid although he worked for Inspector Pratt while suspended. Rowe

argued that he had been a Rural Headman for eight years and the geographical area he

was responsible for was large and included “Ireside as well as for other neighbouring

districts.”84 Accompong was a mere subset of his responsibilities, which suggests that

non-Maroons challenged the rule of law and the Headman was supposed to handle

these challenges as well. He asserted that he helped accomplish the government’s

objectives, arguing that he never saw Thomas Rowe and so could not arrest him and

second, because “Thomas Rowe paid his £3.3:4 Richard Foster is now in prison by

self delivery, all this was done through my influence.”85 What precisely Mr. Rowe did

to effectuate the paying of the fine or Foster’s time in prison was not stated, but Rowe

believed that he was central to this process.

Rowe detailed why he was Headman, “I am a maroon and suppose to serve the

Government when a call of riot is heard & when hard blows are given, but not to

                                                                                                               84 Peter James Rowe, "Letter to Governor Henry A. Black About His Firing from the Rural Headman Post, April 21, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 85 Ibid.

  185  

devote my time as a constable for nothing.”86 The treaty justified Rowe becoming a

headman, as that was the only document that would require Maroons to answer the

“call of riot.” This reason details why the Colonels could not succeed as headmen: the

treaty governed their actions.

Further, a government employee argued that “Rowe told me himself that he

was willing to arrest Thomas Rowe but that he dared not do so, because the family

would be ‘down on him.’ He was afraid of them.”87 Because of his social and political

proximity to the Accompong community he, did not have the political muscle to arrest

Rowe and bring him to justice. Given Rowe’s divided loyalties between the

Accompong Maroons and the Jamaican government, he was unable to restrict the

Maroons’ land acquisition activities and therefore too problematic to keep as Rural

Headman. Going forward, the Jamaican government had to be confident that the

recommended candidate would really try to implement the goals of the Jamaican

government: stopping the Accompong from trying to take lands outside of their treaty

lands. The surviving documents about Fullerswood do not discuss when Jamaica

started using headman or the process was for appointing them to implement the

government’s will. Nevertheless, Jamaica resorted to indirect rule to resolve the

Accompong land conflicts. By December 1896, there was evidence that a Headman

                                                                                                               86 Ibid. 87 Unidentified, "Jamaican Government Employee Note About Rowe's Failure to Arrest Thomas Rowe, May 4, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  186  

had run into political problems within the Accompong community for trying to

implement the will of the government.88

Jameson Calder, the Acting Inspector, approved of Colonel Wright’s

appointment as headman.89 While the government sneered at “Colonels,” it appointed

them as headman because they had already demonstrated political leadership and

viability within the community. The government rode on the coattails of Accompong’s

political structure to try to effect this change.

As evidence of Inspector Calder’s satisfaction with Headman, Colonel Wright,

Wright was voted out of office in one year later for advancing the government’s

agenda. The government again ordered the Surveyor General’s office to determine the

boundaries of Accompong.90 The Accompong community was concerned that this

survey would result in more land taken away from the community, and Calder

acknowledged that the survey “would entail the loss to many Maroons of land they

had squatted on and cultivated.”91 As a result, the Accompong planned to disrupt the

survey: “they intended to present the interference.”92 Wright’s report to Calder did not

provide specifics about the content of the interference. Ezekiel Wright cautioned the

community against taking this course of action. As a result, the Accompong branded

him as someone who was “on the side of the Crown,” and at a meeting, removed him

                                                                                                               88 Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 23 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 89 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter from Calder to the Constabulary Office Concerning Political Changes in Accompong, 13 July, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 Calder, "1897," 1B/576/365/CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  187  

as Colonel.93 The community’s role, through warfare or other means, was to protect

Accompong land. The Accompong’s expansion into Fullerswood could not have been

the responsibility of only a family and supporters, but had to involve the entire

community. Herein lay the political consequences Wright faced when he tried to

prevent a survey that would not have included any part of Fullerswood. Such political

changes would not be effectuated through one family, but by an entire community.

Hence, Colonel Wright’s challenge went beyond trying to reason with an

Accompong family about land. He had the obligation of trying to stop the entire

Accompong community from upsetting the Jamaican government. Wright had also

tried to stop them from attempting to take possession of Fullerswood again. Still, the

government, perhaps in recognition of his actions, decided to keep him in place as the

rural headman, advising Wright to “keep [Calder] informed of [the Accompong’s]

movements and intentions.”94

The Jamaican government, in its attempts to make the Accompong stay within

their boundaries, used the Headman to do so. Generally, it selected an individual who

had been elected Colonel to fulfill this role because they understood that the Colonel

would already have great sway within the community and was likely to be able to

influence the direction the community took. Yet, at the same time the government

thought the Colonels would be most useful in terms of putting a local face on colonial

policies, they underestimated the political expectations the Accompong community

                                                                                                               93 Ibid. 94 Calder, "Letter from Calder to the Constabulary Office Concerning Political Changes in Accompong, 13 July, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  188  

placed on the Colonels, such that it was impossible for someone to retain the title of

Colonel and serve as a Headman without being looked at askance by the Accompong

community. Hence, two Headmen in this period were voted out as Colonels: Colonel

Rowe lost his office because he tried to encourage Thomas Rowe to surrender to

Jamaica’s police. Colonel Wright was voted out because he would allow the Jamaican

government to survey Accompong lands, an act that would have diminished

Accompong land holdings. As a result, Headman were unsuccessful in implementing

the will of the Jamaican government in the Accompong community, which meant that

the Accompong continued to skirt expectations that they would not acquire additional

land and stay within their boundaries as “negroes” should.

The Accompong still sought to move their agenda. Hence, while they had a

hidden transcript of expanding Accompong land, they also knew that they had to give

some nod to the public transcript and therefore, the community continued to try to

frame, in a political arena, their arguments for Accompong ownership of Fullerswood

in the language of Jamaica’s land laws.

Another Nod to the Rule of Law: Inheritance

By March 1898, the Accompong wrote the Jamaican government and staked

out a different claim for Fullerswood. There were several signatories, but the first one

was Henry Ezekiel Wright as Clerk for the Maroons, the same person who was both

Headman and a Colonel in the community. He worked with the new Colonel, Isaac

Miles, a name that had not previously appeared in Accompong documents. Once

Ezekiel Wright was voted out of office he renewed his commitment to the community

  189  

and advanced the Accompong’s land interests and was rewarded with a position on the

Council. Curiously, Mr. Wright still held the title of Headman. So satisfied the

community was with him in his about face connected to the Jamaican government’s

positions about their lands that he was given the title of Clerk, a title not seen in other

documents connected with the Accompong.

The first claim the Accompong made about their land was that they were using

lands that were possessed by their forefathers, e.g. the land had been in the

Accompong community for generations.95 Earlier, the claim they made about “forth

Fathers” was that one of them had a grandparent who willed them the land, a means of

making a claim to land through the law of inheritance.96 When the Accompong used

the term “forthfathers,” they made two claims: that the Jamaican government valued

inheritance as a means of claiming land; the second claim being a way of inserting the

hidden transcript, namely that the Maroons forefathers (Cudjoe, Accompong, Nanny,

etc.) had won this land and Accompong was granted it by treaty.

In that the Accompong asserted that they were entitled to land bamboozled

from them in the written treaty, they made an argument that the treaty and the

agreements surrounding it were the proper basis of law in which to adjudge their

claims. It was the importance of the treaty that prompted them to write “we are all

Loyal Subject to the Crown . . .”97 According to the Jamaican government, the

Accompong’s refusal to pay taxes on lands that they owned and stay off lands that

                                                                                                               95 Henry Ezekiel Wright and Isaac Miles, "Letter to Sir Augustus Hemming, March, 1898," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid.  

  190  

were outside of their purview was evidence of their disloyalty to the Crown. However,

for the Accompong, their determination to “keep up our Loyalty for our Queen and &

Country” reflected their willingness to abide by the treaty. Further, the Accompong

could have been making an argument that reflected their determination to keep the

peace, namely that they did not cause hostilities like the Trelawney had in the Second

Maroon Wars; the Trelawney had lands removed from them because they had failed to

be loyal to the Queen. Because they were determined to keep the peace as dictated by

the treaty, there would be no basis for the Jamaican government to take away the

privileges of land holding. Second, the Accompong continued to argue that their use of

Fullerswood justified their possession of it, their stock and cattle fed from that land.98

Feeding their stock at Fullerswood helped to make a claim for adverse possession.

On August 11, 1898, the Maroons again attempted to take possession of

Fullerswood. By the 15th, Inspector Calder asserted that there was little substance to

any Maroon threat and aside from one rogue community member, they would settle

the manner in court through civil action.99 He stated that he had “implicit confidence

in Rural Headman Wright, who was at one time Colonel of the Maroons, and I have

carefully instructed him to inform me if Foster succeeds in stirring up the others to

take any unlawful action with regard to Fullerswood.”100 Foster, whom Rural

Headman Wright was supposed to be watching, was one of two individuals on the

                                                                                                               98 Ibid. 99 Jameson Calder, "Letter to the Inspector General Concerning the Sort of Threat Posed by the Accompong, 15 August, 1898," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 100 Ibid.

  191  

Colonel’s council, who had authority to act on Fullerswood.101 Given the political

proximity between Rural Headman Wright and Foster, it was unlikely that the Rural

Headman, as Council Clerk, would betray his community members’ confidences,

especially because it was by putting the government’s interests ahead of the

community’s. Once again, indirect rule was doomed to fail with the Accompong

community, which also jeopardized the government’s ability to assert the rule of law

and the public transcript over the Accompong.

White Jamaicans found the Accompong’s incursions into Fullerswood so

frequent and threatening that they spread rumors of the Accompong’s next plans. They

doubted whether the Accompong would seek Fullerswood peacefully or do whatever it

took to win the properties. One final time the Accompong threatened war to take

another part of Fullerswood. While the Jamaican government did not use force to

persuade the Accompong to back off, they understood the Accompong were not

necessarily going to make good on its threat.

One Final Demand for Fullerswood

Four years after the Accompong Maroons started demanding Fullerswood,

once again on June 17, 1899, a White settler named J. R. Williams wrote a letter to

Mr. Purchase, the Inspector of Police in Savanna-La-Mar concerning the “Maroons”

intentions. The author also questioned the legitimacy of the Maroon population. While

some members of the general public took them seriously, others questioned whether

they existed.                                                                                                                101 Henry Ezekiel Wright and Isaac Miles, "Letter to Sir Augustus Hemming, March, 1898," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  192  

A Maroon whose last name was Stone, went down to Fullerswood with his son

and other men. Stone, who led this demand for Fullerswood, “styles himself a

captain.”102 Regardless of what Mr. Williams thought about the legitimacy of the

Accompong community and their political structure, Mr. Stone invoked his title of

Captain so that his legitimacy in speaking for the Accompong community would not

be questioned. Williams stated that the Accompong Maroons went down to

Fullerswood demanding that if it was not distributed appropriately, there would be

bloodshed, which suggested that the Accompong were willing to claim Fullerswood as

a community because he was putting community resource on the line for warfare.

Mr. Williams found the Accompong’s threat of warfare troubling as he as he

considered unrest across Jamaica. He implied that many threats had been made (by

whom he did not specify) and so he thought that the Maroons’ threats should be taken

seriously.103 He was also concerned because they made a claim for his parcel.

Purchase wrote to the Acting Inspector General about his further investigations of the

Accompong’s activity surrounding Fullerswood. He determined that while some

Maroons talked about taking Mr. Williams’ property, they had not taken any further

action.104 In response to Mr. Williams’ complaint, Mr. Purchase had collected a

number of statements about the Maroons’ activities on his land and surrounding

properties which showed that: (1) Rural Headmen were used beyond Accompong to

                                                                                                               102 J.R. Williams, "Letter to C.G. Parchar, Esq., Inspector of Police Concerning Accompong Threats to Take Fullerswood, 17 June, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 103 Ibid. 104 W. Purchase, "Letter from W. Purchase to the Acting Inspector General Concerning Accompng Activity on Fullerswood, June 30, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  193  

keep the peace; (2) that while the Accompong were determined to expand their land

holdings, they wanted nothing beyond what they thought was included in the treaty;

and (3) they were not planning any larger rebellious activities with other “negroes” in

St. Elizabeth or neighbouring parishes.

A. B. Zouass, a property owner at Water Works in Fullerswood complained

that the Accompong demanded that his wife turn over the property because it was

theirs.105 He made his complaint directly to Samuel Murray, the “Rural Headman of

Poilco,”106 which suggests that Headmen were not there only to keep the Maroon

population within their boundaries, but also to keep the larger “negroe” population in

line. There was already another Headman assigned to deal with the Maroons,

incursions this Headman had not dealt directly with the Maroon community.

Ultimately, after Mrs. Zouass complained about the Accompong’s activities, he never

saw any more of them.

The next set of statements suggested that the Accompong’s rumored

determination to acquire land beyond Fullerswood was baseless. Indeed, George

Maxwell, a Justice of the Peace in Warrenton District, William Max Paulon of

Woodside District, Thomas Nelson Wittingham of Strewie Pen, and Robert McFarlane

at Barney Side Pen never saw the Accompong or were faced with threatening actions

                                                                                                               105 W. Purchase, "Statement from A. B. Zouass, Esq., June 20, 1899," 1B5763365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 106 W. Purchase, "Statement from Samuel Murray, June 20, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  194  

from them.107 The Accompong targeted Zouass because he owned (occupied from the

perspective of the Accompong) parcels that formed part of Fullerswood.

Mr. Purchase took statements from these men who confirmed that the

Accompong sought Zouass out because they wanted him to relinquish the parcel of

land he owned at Fullerswood. Philip Wright stated that in May 1899, a buggy passed

him and one of the passengers asked if Rollie Williams was in their buggy. Mr. Wright

did not answer the question and instead tried to identify who was speaking with him.

He stated that “another one said we are Accompong maroons & we are going to water

works,” a place at Fullerswood.108 Daniel Stewart also reported a similar interaction

with Accompong Maroons. After Stewart asked whether the Maroon wanted to see

Mr. Williams, the Maroons told him “no I don’t want him but the land he lives on in

Kew Park if he don’t quickly deliver it up to us it will cost a bloodshed, for it belongs

to us.”109

The underlying concern settlers had about the Maroons was that they were

planning rebellious activities across St. Elizabeth (the parish where Accompong is

located) and Westmoreland (the parish directly to the west of St. Elizabeth). Residents

were concerned that the Maroons were using the home of a Mr. Irving to plan a

rebellion but the worry was baseless. William Max Paulson said that “I know Paul

                                                                                                               107 W. Purchase, "Statement from George Maxwell, June 21, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica; W. Purchase, "Statement from Thomas Nelson Wittingham, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica; W. Purchase, "Statement from William Max Paulson, June 21, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 108 W. Purchase, "Statement from Philip B. Wright, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spansh Town, Jamaica. 109 W. Purchase, "Statement from Daniel Stewart, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  195  

Irving at Belvedere Mountain I am quite certain the Maroons have had no meetings at

his house.”110

Daniel Irving, another witness the police interviewed, also discussed the

possibility of the Maroons engaging in rebellious activity and concluded that the

Maroons were going to see their attorney. He came home and found the Maroons,

including Mr. Stone at his home where they were staying on their journey. “They told

me that they was going to Savannalamar to see Lawyer Clarke for they was arrested in

Blk River for Fullerswood & they want to recover damages so they are going get an

advise . . .”111 On their way back to Accompong, they again stayed at Mr. Irving’s

home and when asked if they actually saw their attorney, they responded no, he was

not home.112 Given the consistent demands the Accompong made on settlers who lived

in Fullerswood, it would seem that they would have sought legal advice on securing

that land for themselves, indeed it was thought that they had sought this advice before.

Instead, the Maroons tried to seek counsel to get them out of the criminal legal

conundrum they found themselves in as they violated the injunctions issued against

them. Mr. Irving’s statement reinforced the fact that rebellion was not the primary goal

of the Accompong’s actions.

While rebellion was not the Accompong’s stated goal, it was curious that they

continued to threaten warfare to win it. The Accompong framed their demands “as

                                                                                                               110 W. Purchase, "Statement from William Max Paulon, June 21, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 111 W. Purchase, "Statement of Daniel Irving, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 112 Purchase, "Letter from W. Purchase to the Acting Inspector General Concerning Accompng Activity on Fullerswood, June 30, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  196  

give us the land or we will fight you for it,” which forced Fullerswood’s landholders

to question whether Maroons were trying to enlist the broader “negroe” population

with a rebellion. The prospect of Maroons going to war over land must have been a

substantial enough a threat on its own. Inspector George Mansell wrote on June 21,

1899 that two Maroons, notably Major and Captain Stone, were seen at New Park

District, in Westmoreland, holding meetings. As a result, he assigned a police officer

to follow the Accompong to “find out what these two men were doing in

Westmoreland . . .”113 and make sure the Accompong were not planning some sort of

mutiny.

On June 28, 1899, White settlers reported seeing members of the Accompong

practicing obeah not in Accompong or on Fullerswood, but in a different parish.

However, they argued that James Wright, an Accompong Maroon, would return to

New Park, Westmoreland.114 Whites feared obeah as they knew it could be deployed

for evil purposes, including rebellion. No other letters had reported such a sighting in

the Fullerswood case, so without additional detail about what the settlers were seeing

and correlating testimony or letters, such a sighting was treated as part of the rumor

mill. One concern was whether the Accompong were planning rebellious activities

with the other “negroes.” Ultimately, this last claim on Fullerswood did little to

threaten the public transcript, the rule of law concerning land, so that the police were

content to use their Rural Headman to monitor the situation.

                                                                                                               113 Inspector George E. Mansell, "Letter to Secretary Cambridge Concerning the Potential of the Accompong to Mutiny, 21 June, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 114 Unidentified, "Note to Inspector Mansell About Maroons Practicing Obeah, 28 June, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town.

  197  

Conclusion

Placemaking narratives had relevance in these disputes about Fullerswood as

they formed the content of the Accompong’s hidden transcript. Their motivations for

trying to acquire Fullerswood can be understood with the backdrop of the narrative

claiming that the community was being deprived of thousands of acres in their treaty.

Further, the Accompong believed that the only way to secure extra land, if all else

failed, was through warfare, and the community was willing to do so no matter

whether the property was owned by an individual or the entire community. However,

Fullerswood is located east of the Black River and extends beyond the boundaries

delineated in the oral history and so it is hard to escape the possibility that

Fullerswood was a chance for the Maroons to make a land grab for lands that were

more fertile.115 Yet, the Accompong were willing to use legal arguments beyond the

treaty to advance their position, including adverse possession and the laws of

inheritance.

The government had a much different agenda in handling Fullerswood. At the

insistence of the Privy Council and the Colonial Secretary, the Jamaican government

stopped enforcing the Land Allotment Act. It saw the possibility that Maroons could

function in post-emancipation society the same way they did during slavery: putting

down rebellions in the event the peasantry rose up. Through diplomacy and indirect

rule, the government sought to limit the amount of land the Accompong could claim

by squatting. Additionally, the land agenda applied to the Maroons was the same as                                                                                                                115 Roxburgh, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary Concerning the Arrest of Maroons Connected to Fullerswood, 14 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  198  

applied to the Black peasants: the Maroons would be more like the “negroes.”

Nevertheless, for the Privy Council in London, the primary concern was that no

Accompong Maroon rebellion occurred in Jamaica; the Privy Council wanted to

ensure that the Accompong abided by the terms of the treaty.

Further, one unique aspect of Fullerswood was the burgeoning interest in

indirect rule as demonstrated by the Jamaican government. Indirect rule was an

attempt to enforce the rule of law among a separate ethnic population both on the

African continent and in Jamaica. The government hoped that selecting Colonels for

the role of Rural Headmen would be sufficient to encourage the Accompong to

comply with the rule of law, meaning that they would stop trying to take Fullerswood

by any method, at a minimum, and comply with the terms of the Land Allotment Act

at its most optimistic. However, an unintended consequence was that Headman who

did what the Jamaican government wanted actually lost credibility within the

Accompong community and therefore were voted out as Colonel. Indeed, only the

Accompong’s agenda would suffice for any political leader.

Ultimately, the Accompong never expanded their land holdings to

Fullerswood. The Accompong were not making claims on idle Crown Lands, instead

the private landowners refused to cede their lands to them. At the same time, the

Jamaican government proved unsuccessful in stopping the Accompong from making

additional land claims (as the next chapter will demonstrate), or in reallocating their

treaty-granted lands as individually owned. Indeed, the treaty assumed just as much

  199  

importance, given the Privy Council’s interests in this situation, as any laws passed by

the Jamaican legislature.

  200  

Chapter 6: The Strathdon Land Conflict (1895 – 1902)

The Strathdon Land Conflict is the last post-emancipation land dispute

between the Accompong and the Jamaican government. The government still sought

to prevent the Accompong from acquiring new land. As Blacks, they were not to be

landholders, but a population providing plantation labor. The Jamaican government

and the Colonial Office had agreed during the Fullerswood land conflict to stop

enforcing the Land Allotment Act and instead pursue a narrower goal: eliminating

squatting and adverse possession as it did with the formerly enslaved. This would

uphold the treaty and maintain peaceful relationships with the Maroons as opposed to

the original plan of trying to disinvest them of treaty lands. Yet the Jamaican

government remained determined to eliminate differences between the Maroons and

the “negroe” population. Therefore, any new Maroon land acquisitions would be

subject to the conditions of the Land Allotment Act: that individual Maroons would

purchase and pay taxes on land outside Accompong. The new public transcript

eliminated the “disabilities” held by the Maroons.1 These limitations comported with

the racialized goal of making all Blacks laborers, the dirty linen of the Land Allotment

Act. Yet the Land Allotment Act contradicted the Colonial Office’s later directives.

Strathdon, a parcel of land the Accompong acquired, was the subject of

another land dispute from 1895 - 1902. Located to the south and west of Accompong,

they had long used it as a source for fresh water and had buried a community member

there. Unlike Fullerswood, Strathdon was not a land grab because the Accompong                                                                                                                1 The primary “disability” the Jamaican government was concerned with was the Accompong communal land holdings.

  201  

were in legitimate possession of it because of adverse possession; Mr. Watson,

Strathdon’s owner, agreed to let them have it. Further, the Watsons missed tax

payments and lost their authority over the land. The government had to delegitimize

Accompong ownership of Strathdon at a time when “negroes” were not to possess

land, and surveyor Colin Liddell facilitated this process. The core of Liddell’s

proposed agreement with the Maroons was that if they failed to meet their tax burden,

the land would revert to the government the same way it had with the Watsons, and

individual landholders would be dispossessed of Strathdon. The government’s

unspoken objective was that they would be forced to support themselves on

plantations. Yet, their refusal to use force compromised their ability to make the

Accompong comply with the new rule of law.

The Accompong never agreed to this vision of their landholdings. They

operated on the basis of their hidden transcript, particularly the placemaking narrative

about their borders. Openly, the Accompong relied on the treaty to support their land

claims and their refusal to pay taxes. No matter the agreement Liddell pieced together,

so long as it diverged from the treaty, they Accompong would not comply.

Contested Trodance, 1895

The Accompong first wrote to the government asserting claims over Trodance2

in 1895, based on their history. Their first argument was that Trodance (Strathdon)

was the place where they could get clean drinking water, a claim that reflects their

                                                                                                               2 Trodance is what the Accompong called this parcel, but the Jamaican government called it Strathdon.

  202  

regular usage of the land.3 The Accompong further complained that Mr. Watson, a

private citizen, had tried to dislodge the Accompong from land their forefathers gave

them.4

The Accompong’s second argument was that they had buried Captain Levose

there, suggesting that his burial place is a placemaking narrative of some importance.

Captain Levose’s title indicates that he was part of the Colonel’s council, the group

who advises the Colonel and the community sees as having historical and political

power.5 Captain Levose had a special burial place like Cudjoe and Accompong who

were buried in Old Town, so he had status in the community; however, aside from

conjecture, written records reveal nothing about who he was.

The Accompong would not abandon Captain Levose’s burial place. Vince

Brown, author of The Reaper’s Garden, argues that the enslaved were concerned that

if they moved away from the dead, the spirits would become unsettled because they

were not near their community.6 The Accompong also held such beliefs: when the

government offered to move them to more fertile lands, such as one possible solution

to Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions, they refused to move. The Accompong did not want

to risk leaving Cudjoe and his brother Accompong in Old Town where their ghosts are

thought to make appearances in the cotton trees nearby.7

                                                                                                               3 Brian, Thomas Rowe, and John R. Foster, "Letter to the Surveyor General's Office, 3 July, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 4 Ibid. 5The Council was created during the Maroon Wars so that Kojo could consult with other Maroons about fighting the Wars. Zips, 109 - 110. 6 Brown, 249. 7 This is one of the placemaking narratives related to me by Bill Peddie on a tour of Accompong. Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008). Zips also refers to the silk cotton trees inhabited by

  203  

The government investigated the Accompong’s claim to possession of

Strathdon and learned that the Accompong had run their cattle on the property and had

done so “from time immemorial.”8 Mr. Watson’s father had “carelessly allowed the

Maroons to take possession” of Strathdon. Further, Mr. Watson, the son, owed back

taxes risking forfeiture.9 Mr. Watson faced two issues: he could not evict the

Accompong until he paid his back taxes on Strathdon, and he would have to prove that

the Accompong did not legitimately own the land by squatting, or in legal parlance,

adverse possession.10 It was this continuous, notorious, open, and undisturbed

possession of Strathdon by the Accompong that gave them a legitimate claim.

When Colin Liddell, the surveyor, first heard about Accompong’s claims

regarding Strathdon, his first response was that the Accompong never trespassed on

the land they did not think they owned.11 Liddell sought to determine which party’s

                                                                                                               the first-timers. Zips, 117 - 119. Narratives about the cotton trees where the ancestors lived were also related to Archibald Cooper, a researcher of the Accompong Maroons where he describes the Old Town area where “[t]he outstanding feature of the place is four tremendous cotton trees which have gnarled roots which are particularly above ground. Under each of the four trees lives the ghost of one of the four siblings: Accompong, Nanny, Cuffee, and Quankee.” Archibald Cooper, "Ic, " Archibald Cooper Manuscripts, Accompong, Jamaica. 8 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Accompong Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 CSO (2) (1870 - 1895) Spanish Town, Jamaica. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. Adverse possession is defined as open, notorious, continuous possession of a parcel of land where if the owner did not object to using that land over a particular period of time, generally seven years under common law, then ownership and possession moves to the person who engaged in adverse possession. This is also called “squatting” in colonial records. Until a claimant can make a colorable claim to owning a parcel of land by adverse possession, they are using the land illegally by “trespassing.” 11 Liddell, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, July 16, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  204  

claim was legitimate and resorted to adverse possession, an argument that could

potentially expand Accompong land holdings.12

How to Deal With the Accompong When They Trespass (1896)

When Watson, Jr. complained about the Accompong trespassing on his lands

to the Jamaican government, it took the opportunity to rethink the applicable law. The

government mused that because the Accompong had no legitimate claim to

Accompong, they must have been trespassing; the very same charge that would have

been leveled against the Black population trying to acquire land by squatting or

adverse possession. The government stated “it would really be much better to place it

within the power of private landowners to easily and effectually punish these Maroons

for trespass by imprisonment with the option of a fine.”13 Because the Land Allotment

Act put the Accompong on the same footing as all of the Queen’s subjects, they

should also be seen as trespassers when improperly using other peoples’ lands.

However, the government’s new approach produced two problems. First, that the elder

Watson yielded a portion of Strathdon to the Accompong community; second, the

Watsons owed back taxes that jeopardized their ownership. Hence, the Accompong,

through adverse possession, made a legitimate counterclaim for Strathdon.

The Jamaican government still hoped to deprive the Accompong of Strathdon

so their community did not move beyond the treaty-delineated boundaries and

                                                                                                               12 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Accompong Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 CSO (2) (1870 - 1895) Spanish Town, Jamaica. 13 Ibid.

  205  

frustrate their ability to acquire land by adverse possession.14 In order to discourage

the Accompong from aggressive land acquisition, the government decided to stop

surveying their lands. It thought the surveys succeeded in keeping the Accompong

functioning separately from the Black population. However, the government once

again wondered whether the Accompong could be legitimately perceived as distinct

from the larger Black community.

Maroons Are Not Really Maroons

The government argued that most of “Maroon Town[’s],” residents were not

really Maroons because “[t]he present lot have very much intermixed with, and are no

different to, the ordinary population, except that they pay not taxes of any kind.”15 The

term “intermixed with” signals a racial designation because in the late nineteenth

century, people were thought to maintain racial distinctiveness by mating within their

racial group.16 The Accompong’s willingness to mate with “the ordinary population”

underscored the racial similarities between the communities and reinforced the

government’s earlier conclusion of no racial basis for legally treating the Maroons

differently than the rest of the Black population.

The Jamaican government also saw the Maroon’s fragile political organization

as reason to discount the existence of an Accompong community. The Colonel had

died and the community had not elected a replacement that signaled the lack of a

                                                                                                               14Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable J. Chamberlain M.P., 30 March, 1896," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 15 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Accompong Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 CSO (2) (1870 - 1895) Spanish Town, Jamaica. 16 Banton, 85.

  206  

political structure to reinforce the Accompong’s differences from ordinary

“Negroes.”17 In the absence of a Colonel, the Accompong had been relying more on

the government appointed headman.18 Further, the 1883 Proclamation declared that

the Maroons no longer had military obligations beyond any other member of the

British Empire rendering the community military designations meaningless to the

government.19

The Accompong’s racial mixing combined with faltering government provided

evidence to the Jamaican government that “in course of time these people will entirely

lose, or forget their claim to distinctiveness if it is not injudiciously kept alive.”20 The

Accompong talked about their treaty and insisted that they owed no taxes, but

ultimately, they were harmless, suggesting not only political weakness, but military

weakness as well.21 As a result, the government also had reason to ignore their

previous agreement with the Colonial Secretary’s Office to stop assimilating the

Accompong with the general population; they decided to reincorporate the goal of the

                                                                                                               17 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Accompong Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 CSO (2) (1870 - 1895) Spanish Town, Jamaica. 18 Recall the discussion in chapter 5 about the role of headmen, that the Jamaican government used them in an attempt to both give the Accompong a guarantee of certain rights and also enforce a culture on an ethnicized peasantry. Ultimately, as applied to the Accompong, the headmen were to assist the Maroons in complying with the Land Allotment Act. In chapter 5 the headmen were selected from the community; however, the sources connected with Strathdon do not reveal who was serving in this capacity although based on the silence about who was the headman and the earlier experiences the government had with the Accompong in this position, this person was probably not from Accompong. Ibid. 19 Ibid. Further, for the precise terms of the treaty, see Musgrave, "Proclamation Exempting Maroons from Military Service, April 16, 1883, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. This Proclamation is the 1883 Proclamation discussed in Chapter 4 that the Governor passed with the hope that the Accompong would drop their petitions challenging whether they should pay taxes and hoping that they would start paying them. 20 Unidentified, "Report to the Colonial Secretary About the Accompong's Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 (CSO) 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 21 Ibid.

  207  

Land Allotment Act.22 The moment seemed ripe for the Accompong’s allies, the

Reverends Stuart and Lea, to help the government resolve the Strathdon land issues in

a way that would comply with the Land Allotment Act and pay taxes on it like the

Queen’s “negroe” subjects.

Role of Clergy

The Jamaican government turned to the clergy who had worked with the

Accompong community before to settle their claim for Strathdon in a way that would

not upset them.23 While the government considered the clergy critical in facilitating

discussion between the Accompong and the government, they had sometimes

advocated positions hostile to the interests of the Jamaican government. This time, the

Reverends suggested ways to resolve it that would advance the government’s agenda.

They argued that a meeting with Liddell and themselves would only cause the

Accompong to think too highly of themselves and so a letter cautioning the

Accompong from interfering with private property would be the most judicious course

of action.24

Lea recognized that the government had to legitimize the Accompong’s claim

to part of Strathdon because Watson, Sr. no longer wanted to claim it, a position that

seriously compromised Watson Jr.’s claim. Lea recommended that Strathdon be

advertised for forfeiture. If the Watsons could demonstrate that they legally owned

                                                                                                               22 Unidentified, "Internal Govenrment Memo About Letter from Privy Council, March 13, 1896," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 23 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to the Rev. John Stuart, 19 August, 1895," Spanish Town, Jamaica. 24 John Stuart, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary Concerning the Accompong and Strathdon, September 6, 1895," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Balaclava.

  208  

Strathdon, the Accompong should “submit to the law.” If not, the government should

sell the lots to the Accompong at easy terms.25 Lea’s proposal made his involvement

in these negotiations easier because he crafted a position that was potentially palatable

to the community, namely that they could expand their land holdings. Prior proposals

emphasized keeping the Maroons off other peoples’ lands, and tax payments,

proposals the Accompong rejected under any condition. The clergy, as they served

both the Accompong and the surrounding Jamaicans, sought the same thing for both

communities: land so they could live independently. When they argued for one

community to be able to acquire more land, they saw themselves as making that

argument for the other one as well. The Jamaican government and the clergy had a

point of agreement so it became easier for them to agree on policy objectives related to

the Accompong community.

Nevertheless, Lea still ensured that the interests of the Accompong were

addressed and warned the government that there was “a great deal too much written

and spoken to the disparagement of these Maroons.”26 He once again stressed that the

government should list Strathdon for foreclosure and the matter would be settled if

Mr. Watson paid back taxes. If not, the lands should be sold in lots with a preference

given to the Accompong.27

Lea also agreed with the government that it should own Strathdon temporarily,

although the Accompong already owned it. Uncharacteristically, Rev. Lea and the

                                                                                                               25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid.

  209  

government proposed dispensing with Strathdon contrary to the Accompong’s

interests. The Accompong had two bases for a claim Strathdon: (1) that they had used

a water source on Strathdon; and (2) the Accompong ran their cattle there from “time

immemorial.” If the Accompong claimed Strathdon through adverse possession, the

title should have transferred immediately with the Crown effectuating this transfer.

Alternatively, the Reverends suggested a sale to collect back taxes the back taxes from

Watson, Jr. The government had newly succeeded in securing the clergy as an ally

depriving the Accompong of additional lands.

In September 1895, Liddell, the Crown Surveyor, who was pleased with the

Reverends’ suggestion, revamped their proposal. He was not concerned with

Accompong trespass on other lands; however, he was concerned with Mr. Watson’s

tax challenges. Liddell proposed that Strathdon be put up for forfeiture. If Mr. Watson

failed to pay his taxes, the land would be divided into lots for the Maroons “who have

already completely swallowed it up.”28 This part of the proposal comported with the

clergy’s recommendations. However, Liddell did not hide his irritation with the

Accompong who were not satisfied controlling Cook’s Bottom, 4,000 acres of Crown

Land. Ultimately, “if they held their land each man in fee instead of in Common as at

present and were taxed like other people” this would not happen.29 Liddell sought to

have the Maroons behave like the Queen’s subjects and pay taxes by shifting the tax

burden away from Mr. Watson to the Accompong who would satisfy Watson’s

                                                                                                               28 Colin Liddell, "Leter to the Honourable Colonial Secretary About Disposition of Strathdon Vis-a-Vis the Accompong, September 13, 1895," 1B 576 333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 29 Ibid.

  210  

outstanding tax bill. Liddell hoped that Rev. Stuart would ask the Accompong if they

were ready to have Strathdon subdivided and to start paying taxes on it, exactly the

conditions set for treaty land in the Land Allotment Act.30 Liddell was explicit that if

the Accompong did not uphold the terms of the Land Allotment Act applied in this

context, they would be trespassing on Crown Land. Without additional Crown Lands,

the Accompong could not support their communities and would have to join the non-

land owning population who worked on plantations.

However, how would the government enforce tax collection? Liddell’s

proposal did not expect that the State would bring force to bear, a peculiar stance

given that the Jamaican government was regularly willing to use force with the Black

peasantry in order to make sure they were working on plantations, as “free laborers”

should. The 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion marked the pinnacle of this use of force

against Black peasants. Land issues were part of the challenges that Black peasants

faced in their quest to define full freedom, freedom to define their lives away from the

plantations that had totally shaped their lives during slavery. The formerly enslaved

tried to maintain land in the face of the police deploying the use of force:

In the summer of 1859, for example, settlers on Florence Hall, an estate in Westmoreland, were charged with trespass, and police were sent out to eject them. When the settlers resisted, they were arrested and confined to the jail in Falmouth. Before they could be tried, however, a crowd of several hundred supporters broke them out of jail. In the ensuing melee, ten or twelve other prisoners were rescued from police custody as well, and the station house was

                                                                                                               30 Ibid. Why owning land would prevent the Accompong from trespassing was not clear. Given that the Accompong were acting on a hidden transcript suggests that whether they owned particular parcels of land or not would not prevent them from trespassing on land that they thought was theirs.

  211  

stoned. During this confrontation police fired into the crowd, killing two women instantly and wounding four or five others.31

Black peasants pressed the logically consistent claim that abandoned lands

should revert to the queen and then sold in the public domain to the people: the Black

peasants. However, the government was unwilling to abide by this perspective.32

Ultimately, the legislature consistently adopted positions that were hostile to the

interests of the peasantry and ultimately “eliminated effective legal remedies for small

freeholders and renters.”33 Black peasants could not “squat” and win land because they

never had a “legitimate” means of acquiring land if they had not bought it by the

1860s. Not only did the government resort to violence, but they also configured the

legal system to ensure that Black peasants could not hold onto land. Hence, it seems

that the Jamaican government could position itself to force the Accompong pay taxes

on any lot of land they owned.

Yet, in March 1898, the government had not completed its proceedings against

Mr. Watson for back taxes and acknowledged that the Accompong had been in

possession of it since Watson, Sr. was alive.34 It had initiated proceedings that were

still pending to reclaim back taxes. Ultimately, the Accompong did own the land by

adverse possession and “renders them liable to buy in substitution for him [Watson,

                                                                                                               31 Holt, 267. 32 Ibid., 269. 33 Ibid., 277. 34 Surveyor General's Office, "Letter to the Honorable Colonial Secretary About Whether the Accompong Owe Back Taxes, March 19, 1898," 1B 576 365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  212  

Jr.] & does not free the land from its obligation,”35 they should pay the back taxes on

Strathdon if they acquired it.36

While Strathdon was bogged down with tax issues, the government still failed

to move beyond an internal discussion of the terms under which the Accompong could

use Strathdon. They also faced the problem of how to enforce any new agreement with

them considering that throughout all three land disputes they had been unable to

collect taxes from them.

Accompong Claims Grow More Ambitious, 1900

By November 1900, the issues concerning taxation and ownership of Strathdon

were still unresolved. The Accompong made the same treaty claims for the land they

called Trodance, it was the only source of good drinking water that they had.37 This

time, the Accompong made a novel treaty-based claim: that Juan De Bolas and other

Maroons “received plots of land on consideration of service given to the English.”38

De Bolas, in 1655, was one of the first to create a Maroon community and won this

land for them via treaty that predated other Accompong claims in the area.39 The

Accompong clearly believed that the 1663 treaty was a basis for their land claims.40

                                                                                                               35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Peter James Rowe, "Letter to Governor Olivier Concerning Ownership of Strathdon, November 6, 1900," 1B 576 365 CSO 2 (1996 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 38 James A Brian Peter James Rowe, John Reid Foster, Wm. Anderson, Isaac Miles, James Wright, Thomas Rowe, Robert Watson, John Gillett, Isaac Peddie, George Gallier, Thos Collie, "Letter to Governor Olivier Concerning Ownership of Strathdon, November 6, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Accompong. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.

  213  

Even after De Bolas gained freedom for some of the Maroons, another group

remained in the mountains unimpressed by the treaty terms De Bolas had negotiated

with the British. De Bolas was made the Colonel of the Black Regiment and was

ordered to reduce the number of Maroons, an expedition that cost his life.41

Ultimately, according to British accounts of the Maroon Wars, a treaty with a Maroon

traitor was the basis of claiming Strathdon.42

Referring to De Bolas reflects that the Accompong unyieldingly insisted on

treaties as the basis of their land arrangements and provided them with another way of

reinforcing the significance of the treaty. The 1739 treaty was not only historic

because of the commingling of blood between the parties, but also because “the

British” never lived up to those initial terms that preceded the 1739 agreement,

including the broadest construction of their land holdings, a 2500 acre land grant.43

Further, in order to underscore the importance of treaties, the Accompong

discuss that land was given “in consideration of service given to the British,” a term

that has a very specific legal meaning and cements the importance of this treaty to the

                                                                                                               41 Edwards, iv. It is important to remember Zips’ critique that the British often referred to Blacks as in submission when referring to a treaty because at that time, it was inconceivable that people of African heritage could be sovereigns. Zips, 194. This brings to mind Trouillot’s notion of “unthinkability.” “Negroe” sovereignty was unthinkable, so when treaties were negotiated with them, they were characterized as submissions to the government. Trouillot, 70 - 107. 42 Werner Zips challenges the British notion that De Bolas was necessarily a traitor to the Maroons. Lubolo, as Zips called him, had won 30 acres of land per capita, the first Maroon agreement. Zips acknowledges a relatively barren oral history concerning him in the Accompong history, and cedes that it was possible that another Maroon group killed him. Scholars such as Campbell and Robinson argue that Juan de Serras, another leader of Maroons in Jamaica’s interior, had killed him for betraying the fight for Black freedom. Zips argues that betraying Black freedom would not have been the motive; instead, the Maroons would have either killed him because (1) they wanted to send a message to other “rebels” to make sure they did not side with the British, or (2) send a message to the colonial power that they needed to improve the terms of the treaty. Zips, 52 - 54. 43 Peter James Rowe, "Letter to Governor Olivier Concerning Ownership of Strathdon, November 6, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Accompong.

  214  

Accompong.44 Consideration is defined as “the inducement to a contract, something of

value given in return for a performance or a promise by another, for the purpose of

forming a contract; one element of a contract that is generally required to make the

agreement of the parties enforceable as a contract.”45 The item of value the De Bolas

led Maroons and the Accompong gave up was the promise of peace, no more warfare

against the British for their freedom. In exchange, the British had to deliver a promise,

the Accompong Maroons heard this as land for their community. By exchanging these

elements, there is consideration for an agreement between the Maroons and the

British.

Further, the Accompong argued that the governor would settle disputes

between the Accompong and others for their land, and how ashamed they are that “the

country people are gaining at us – saying it is good that the Governor is taking all their

[the Accompong’s] lands and now we all shall be alike.”46 The governor’s failure to

live up to his end of the treaty was shameful. The Accompong saw this issue alone as

a breach of the treaty and they understood what the objective of the Land Allotment

Act was, that the “negroe” populations “shall be alike.” The one way to make these

populations alike was to deprive the Accompong of their land to ensure that they

                                                                                                               44 I do not think that the Accompong would use the term “in consideration” as a legal term; however, I am convinced that the Jamaican government would have read it as a legal term and so the government interpreted their letter in the context of the Jamaican legal system whether the Accompong planned on it being read that way or not. 45 Law Dictionary, s.v. "Consideration." However, earlier definitions of consideration could have been seen as “the promisee [giving] something in exchange for the promise that is either a detriment to the promisee or a benefit to the promisor.” Nevertheless, consideration in a contract is the glue that binds the parties together, and the reason it is such an important ingredient to any agreement. E. Allan Farnsworth, Contracts, Second ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990), 43. 46 Peter James Rowe, "Letter to Governor Olivier Concerning Ownership of Strathdon, November 6, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Accompong.

  215  

worked on plantations. This statement points to the fissure between the Maroons and

the “negroes” on the one hand, and the Jamaican government and the “negroes” on the

other. Maroons had no intention of becoming part of the “negroe” community by

relinquishing their land through the dictates of the Land Allotment Act or paying

taxes. To do so would deprive the community of the land that was central to who they

were as reflected by the placemaking narratives. Without land and without those

historical narratives, the Accompong would cease being a separate people.

The Accompong’s statement also reflects the political challenges the Jamaican

government faced as they tried to make the communities the same. The Blacks were

well aware that the Maroon communities had one thing that they did not have, land.

Both the Blacks peasantry and the Jamaican government were well aware that it was

hard to justify one population being able to own land while systematically keeping the

other population from acquiring land by any means possible. So, in addition to trying

to satisfy the needs of the planters for labor, the government tried to appease the

Blacks by making sure that they knew that the government tried to get the Maroon

groups to cede their communal land. Requiring the Accompong to own the land as

individuals and pay taxes on those parcels was the only way in which the Jamaican

state could divest the Maroons of land ownership (presuming the Accompong would

default on their taxes).

So determined were the Accompong to keep their land that they closed the

letter reasserting their treaty based claim to Strathdon and threatened to go to another

nation to resolve this land dispute. The Accompong still upheld themselves to the

  216  

treaty conditions and “still hold ourselves as defending soldiers to his land against

foreign intrusion.”47 They also refused to relinquish any claims they had to

Trodance.48

Colonial Response

Six days after the Accompong reasserted their treaty rights to Strathdon,

Liddell conferred with the Jamaican government concerning how to proceed. He

argued that the Accompong were only entitled to 1200 acres of land: this would equal

the 1000 acres granted to the Accompong by statute49 and the additional 200 acres

they won when Mr. Harrison, a prior surveyor, had surveyed Accompong.50 He

bemoaned the fact that the Accompong refused to stay within their boundaries, but

acknowledged that they extended their land holdings to Strathdon that contained a

total of 300 acres. While the Maroons have always had it in their possession and

rightfully owned it by adverse possession, they still had an obligation to pay taxes on

it. Taking the land by adverse possession “does not [absolve] them from paying taxes

on it any more than other people who steal land are absolved from paying taxes on the

land stolen.”51 Liddell reflected the opinion of the Jamaican government in that

                                                                                                               47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 "An Act to Ascertain and Establish the Boundaries of Trelawney Town, and to Settle and Allot One Thousand Acres of Land for Accompong's Town and to Ascertain the Boundaries Thereof," (Jamaica: The Laws of Jamaica, 1758). 50 Colin Liddell, "Letter to the Honorable Colonial Secretary Concerning the Accompong and Strathdon, November 12, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 51 Ibid.

  217  

acquiring land by adverse possession was the same as stealing, a characterization he

applied to the Accompong and Strathdon.52

However, Liddell asserted, for the first time, that the Accompong actually

owed back taxes on Strathdon. Once the Accompong had become the only owners,

Liddell argued, they became liable for taxes. As a result, the Bailiff had the right to

take possession of Strathdon away from the Maroons (because they had not paid their

taxes). The appearance of the bailiff provoked a letter from the Accompong asserting

their treaty rights. As far as Liddell was concerned, if the Accompong wanted to keep

Strathdon, they needed to pay the taxes on it.53

The government agreed with Liddell’s position and concluded that the

Governor would let the Accompong keep Strathdon if they would commit to paying

taxes on the property.54 Yet they were still unsure about how much acreage Strathdon

contained and how much the Accompong actually held by adverse possession.55

Subsequently, a government employee met with Lea and summarized the Maroons’

claims as having 1500 treaty-granted acres that did not square with the government’s

understanding. The Trelawney Maroons were granted 1500 acres, the statutory grant

to the Accompong was only 1,000 acres.56

                                                                                                               52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Unidentified, "Note About the Accompong's Ownership of Strathdon, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 55 Unidentified, "Note About the Number of Acres in Strathdon, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 56 Unidentified, "Employee Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Legal Land Grants to the Accompong, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. "An Act to Ascertain and Establish the Boundaries of Trelawney Town, and to Settle and Allot One Thousand Acres of Land for Accompong's Town and to Ascertain the Boundaries Thereof," (Jamaica: The Laws of Jamaica, 1758).

  218  

By December 1901, Colin Liddell had reached an agreement with the

Accompong about their boundaries concerning Strathdon. He procured a signed

agreement with four terms: (1) that the Accompong would keep 1,220 acres based on

the 1868 survey with Mr. Harrison and the land would be resurveyed so the

boundaries were clear; (2) Maroons on Crown Lands outside of the 1,220 acres would

purchase that land in fee simple for no more than £1 per acre and if they did not want

to purchase it, give those Crown Lands back and return to Accompong; (3) Maroons

living outside of Accompong, would have to pay taxes on that land; and finally (4) the

Spring and burial place at Strathdon would not be sold to any buyers.57 Ultimately,

Liddell sought to bring resolution to this matter by effectively trying to craft a new

agreement with the Accompong about taxation, a document that could be seen as an

addendum to the treaty.

Nevertheless, agreements with the Accompong that wavered from the treaty

were notoriously difficult. Liddell immediately tried to follow up with this agreement.

When he met with the Accompong on December 17, 1901, the meeting was

“uproarious and disorderly” because there were several fights during the course of the

meeting.58 The following meeting in Retirement Church started with Rev. Lea

explaining the history of the Maroons and the treaties; and his explanation was greeted

with “growling.”59 But with Lea’s help, the Accompong were seemingly amenable to

                                                                                                               57 Colin Liddell, "Agreement Concerning Strathdon, December 17, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Retirement, Jamaica. 58 Colin Liddell, "Report Concerning Meeting with the Accompong About Strathdon, December 19, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 59 Ibid.

  219  

Liddell’s proposal. Ultimately, Liddell concluded that he put the agreement in writing

because he knew that the Maroons tended to have “convenient memories, and forget

or deny any agreement they may make verbally.”60 However, Liddell put far too much

emphasis on the importance of having this agreement in writing, agreements had to be

sealed by both sides drinking the rum and blood mixture from a calabash. Liddell’s

narrative about this “agreement” did not contain any such ceremony and was not seen

as a permanently binding agreement.61

Liddell and Lea sought greater community support for the agreement and

convened 60 to 70 Colonels and other officers for a meeting. Lea successfully

convinced eleven of the “principal men” to agree to the above terms and these men

signed the agreement.62 Indeed, Liddell states that Lea thought “he had never seen a

more orderly meeting in Maroon Town.”63

Liddell wanted the government to implement the agreement quickly so the

Accompong did not change their mind or receive contrary advice. Liddell also wanted

a bailiff to be available: the bailiff could order the police to come if the Accompong

disrupted the survey and the bailiff would assist with executing the writs for the

surrounding property. Ultimately, Liddell was concerned that the “’Colonel’” and the

“’Officers’” had no authority over the larger body of Maroons and while he had the

                                                                                                               60 Ibid. 61 Bilby; Kopytoff; Zips, 75 - 6. Recall my earlier discussion in Chapter 4 about how treaties are formed among the Accompong – that the mixing of rum, blood from each party to an agreement, and soil between the two parties form a permanent agreement between them. 62 Liddell, "Report Concerning Meeting with the Accompong About Strathdon, December 19, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 63 Ibid.

  220  

agreement of a portion of the community, “there may be others whom nothing will

satisfy.”64

Liddell’s stance about the political leaders in the Accompong community

presented him with a contradiction. In his report he puts the terms Colonel and

Officers in quotations, he did not believe in the legitimacy of the Accompong political

structure. These “Colonels” and “Officers” were allegedly politically weak and unable

to keep the community together because there were always other community members

who were disagreeable to changes in landholdings. Nevertheless, it was the

Accompong community and this structure that he had to rely on to gain the

Accompong’s agreement with his new proposal about individual land acquisition for

Strathdon. The proposal would be illegitimate in the community if the “Colonels and

“Officers” did not approve, ironically the same officials he sought to render

illegitimate in his report to government officials.

The Jamaican government consistently found itself in a dilemma during these

disputes. It worked under the assumption that there was no longer a Maroon

community: the Land Allotment Act had rid of them and forced them, theoretically, to

assimilate into the general population with the rest of the Jamaicans. However, as the

land disputes demonstrate, operation of law does not necessarily comport with the

situation on the ground. The Jamaican government and the Accompong Maroons

worked on two widely varying historical and legal assumptions about the Accompong

community. The Accompong did not agree to assimilate with Jamaicans. Historical

                                                                                                               64 Ibid.

  221  

circumstances created the Accompong community, the Maroon Wars and the treaty

that ended the wars. These specific circumstances were commemorated with an oral

history that was passed on to future generations. So long as true-born Maroons

inherited this oral history,65 the Jamaican government could not disrupt the growth and

strength of the Accompong community. The Jamaican government continued to work

with a community that law could not eliminate.

Liddell’s frustration with the community was evident when he accused the

Accompong community of having an improper reading of their history because their

historical interpretation was based solely on a treaty negotiated with the deported

Trelawney Maroons. As a result, the treaty could not apply to the Accompong

Maroons because the Trelawney lands “were forfeited and sold out to private parties . .

.”66 At the same time he discussed the treaty with the Accompong, they also asserted

that they did not owe any taxes and that “if they were not wanted any more they would

‘join another nation.’ Apart from such little amusing incidents they behaved

remarkably well.”67

By February 1902, Liddell finally got the opportunity to make good on the

agreement he negotiated. In order to implement it, he wanted to go to Accompong

                                                                                                               65 Bilby defines a true-born Maroon as one who belongs in “this ethnic community of both shared ‘blood’ and shared secrets, begins early and continues throughout one’s life in a variety of contexts both formal and informal, ranging form Kromanti Play and Maroon council meetings to rum shop gatherings and chance encounters between fellow Maroons and non-Maroons visitors.” Bilby, 369. Zips takes a slightly different angle on who is a true-born Maroon, given that his research was among the Accompong community and not the Moore Town community Bilby was concerned with. Royal Maroons, in this context, are Maroons who “must be able to trace their ancestors back to the ‘Mother of the Maroons,’ Queen Nanny.” Zips, 118. 66 Liddell, "Report Concerning Meeting with the Accompong About Strathdon, December 19, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 67 Ibid.

  222  

with police assistance; however, the government denied his request.68 When Liddell

went, the surveying went well; but, on the eighth day, it became much more difficult.

Liddell stated that “the Maroons got out of hand and a riot occurred.”69 He told them

that that it was a privilege to use unpatented lands and that the survey would make it

clear what part of the land was theirs and what was unpatented Crown Lands. They

seemed content with this explanation, but the more he started “running the lines,” the

more agitated the Maroons became and soon thereafter, he was surrounded by “a

howling excited mob of some 300 men and women.”70 Rev. Lea had to run

interference between Liddell and the Accompong so together they reminded the

Accompong of the agreement. The Accompong agreed to pay taxes on Strathdon,

assuming they acquired it as individuals, by August 1. If the taxes had not been paid,

he would return and take possession of that land.71

Liddell renegotiated an agreement with the Accompong, but it ran counter to

the terms detailed by the 1739 treaty. Therefore, the Accompong “rioted”72 during the

survey because they feared a governmental land grab, and, as a result, feared that

                                                                                                               68 Governor General's Office, "Letter to the Surveyor General Concerning Following up with the Accompong About Strathdon, January 8, 1902," 1/B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 69 Colin Liddell, "Letter Describing the Challenges Liddell Faced Surveying Accompong, February 4, 1902," Letter, 1B/5/76/36/5 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 70 Ibid. 71 Liddell, "Agreement Concerning Strathdon, December 17, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Retirement, Jamaica. 72 The Jamaican government records probably contain some distortion in characterizing the actions of the Accompong concerning their land. Rioting certainly implies a rather violent reaction to Liddell’s work, but violence is the context in which Whites perceived the Maroons. Zips argues that “the primary aim of the accounts flanking military operations [during the Maroon Wars] was to legitimise the physical elimination of the Maroons . . . all social and cultural aspects of the ‘rebels’ was correspondingly derogatory . . . the first Black freedom fighters of the diaspora were presented as savages close to wild animals.” Zips, 20. Well after the Maroon Wars were over in the post-emancipation era, this characterization of the Maroons was still firmly in place of in the minds of many White Jamaicans, particularly those who worked in the government.

  223  

Liddell would not include Strathdon as part of the survey. No matter what the

agreement was, the Accompong never intended that there would be individual

ownership of Strathdon. It is in the process of finalizing the ownership of Strathdon

when the Accompong asserted their hidden transcript; they planned on reacquiring the

acres lost in the initial verbal blood treaty for the community. However, the

Accompong also relied on the treaty as a public transcript, because it guided

Accompong land grants and other land acquisitions. Based on the treaty, the

Accompong continued to believe that Strathdon was land to which they had been

initially entitled.

At this point Liddell complained to the government about the support it gave

him to settle Accompong’s boundaries. If he had received the police protection he had

sought, he would have been able to keep the peace and finish his job. Liddell wanted

the police to be there as a preventive measure to prevent the riot to which he was a

witness.73 He did not think that the Colonel and the other officers could control the

people and he also noted that the district constable was not even there to help because

he was off duty that day. Ultimately, if he could not receive police assistance for the

surveying, the government had to decide whether they were going to simply abandon

the lands to the Maroons who continually trespassed on those lands.74 The

government would have to use force to keep the Accompong off of non-treaty lands.

                                                                                                               73 Liddell, "Letter Describing the Challenges Liddell Faced Surveying Accompong, February 4, 1902," Letter, 1B/5/76/36/5 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 74 Ibid.

  224  

By mid-1902, the government was poised to bring the Strathdon land issues to

a close. The government granted a tax concession to the Accompong and

communicated that intent with their Surveyor and Collector Generals, namely that

they only had to pay taxes for 1901 – 1902 and that they would be forgiven for the

arrears if the Accompong paid the taxes by June 30.75 The Accompong had full

ownership of Strathdon and had succeeded in expanding their land holdings by the end

of this disagreement with the Jamaican government.

Conclusion

The Strathdon land conflict reflected entrenched positions on the part of the

Maroons and of the colonial state, even as both proved tried to employ new tactics to

further their positions. Maroon grievances were based on the disagreements about

treaty terms. Yet, the Accompong concurrently tried to expand the terms of the treaty

based on their hidden transcript of recovering land that had been swindled from them.

The Accompong’s mode of acquiring new land was adverse possession; although they

would say that they were enforcing what the treaty said their historical understanding

of the treaty.

The treaty, for the Accompong, had singular importance. As the basis of all of

their land claims, the treaty was a fraught document before the ink even dried.

Winning Strathdon was a step towards remedying the treaty the British broke when

they denied the Accompong the 10,000 acres to which they were entitled. While the

Accompong in these interactions focused on their use of water sources at Strathdon                                                                                                                75 Unidentified, "Notes from Government Employees About the Final Disposition of Strathdon/Ruthven - Forgiveness of Taxes in Arrears, April, 1902," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica.

  225  

and the fact that Captain Levose was buried there, his burial being yet another

placemaking narrative, these reasons masked their real agenda, reclaiming lost treaty

land for their community. No amendment to the treaty could persuade the Accompong

to purchase individual land holdings or to pay taxes. At the end of the Strathdon

dispute, the treaty still proved to be the sole way in which the Jamaican government

could deal with the Accompong community.

For the Jamaican government, the Land Allotment Act was the second and

most recent version of the public transcript. The government tried to use the way the

Accompong held land and the tax regime to force the Accompong to reconfigure itself

as a community. However, the government always had a fear of provoking another set

of Maroon Wars and as a result was unwilling to use force to make the Accompong

change their land holdings and pay taxes. In the Strathdon land conflict, this concern

overshadowed bringing in a police force when Liddell went to survey the land

pursuant to the more recent agreement about Strathdon. While the government saw

that the political circumstances in Accompong were fluid and that the Accompong

were actually forming relationships with people of African heritage who lived outside

the Maroon population, their refusal to use force undermined their ability to harness

the changing situation within the community. Hence, while the Accompong

themselves changed over time, the community’s relationship with the government

remained unchanged. Ultimately, the rule of law and the government’s fear of warfare

constrained what it could do. The government never divested the Accompong, or any

other Maroon group, of their treaty granted lands or lands acquired through adverse

  226  

possession. Liddell was willing to take challenging positions with the Accompong and

so the Jamaican government was willing to have him deal with the community.

However, without the use of force, Jamaica had no way of even beginning to seek

conditions from the Accompong about community held lands.

The government’s memories of the Maroon Wars weighed upon them and held

as much meaning for them as the oral histories of winning that war held for the

Accompong. While the government did not seek this outcome, the treaty remained the

public transcript it had to deal with.76 The treaty as a public transcript was the basis,

between 1842, when the Land Allotment Act was passed, and 1905, for the

Accompong to expand their land holdings. The Accompong could advance their

hidden transcript and reacquire land the British promised beyond the borders written

in the treaty not only because of adverse possession, but also because of the

government’s concern over renewed warfare.

                                                                                                               76 Given the continual assaults the Jamaican government has tried to make on the treaty, including the land disputes discussed in this work, as stated by Zips, the real historical significance for the Maroons concerning the treaty “lies in their diplomatic rebuff of the continuous attempts on the part of the colonial power to unilaterally nullify the provisions of the treaties.” Zips, 11.

  227  

Conclusion

The 1840s, the period immediately following the abolition of slavery in the

British Caribbean, was the perfect point in time for the Jamaican government to

rearrange Maroon land holdings with the goal of merging the Maroons into the general

“negroe” population so that plantation owners could employ their labor. Why the

Jamaican government thought that the Maroons after so many years of not being under

the thumb of Jamaican planters would agree to this new arrangement is not clear. That

Jamaica needed labor though is apparent and this need blinded the government to the

difficulties that would likely await them in their effort to secure Maroon labor.

The vehicle for attempting to appropriate Maroon labor was the 1842 Land

Allotment Act, the new “public transcript.” This Act, unilaterally passed by the

Jamaican Assembly, officially repealed the 1739 and 1740 peace treaties with

Jamaica’s Maroons and all subsequent legislation pertinent to the Maroon

communities. The Act required that Maroons change ownership of their lands from

communal to individual landholdings.1 As a result, individual landholders would have

to pay taxes on their lots. The hope was that when the former Maroons defaulted on

their taxes, their lands would be seized by the government and put to more productive

use when sold to planters.

The Jamaican government’s approach to the Accompong fits in the overall

narrative of post-emancipation societies in which the colonial state played an active

                                                                                                               1 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842).

  228  

role, depriving land from the formerly enslaved either by disrupting the process of

adverse possession (squatting), or setting up legal barriers to land acquisition.2 While

the state and planters generally succeeded in their efforts in most post-emancipation

societies, the Jamaican government struggled to implement this policy against the

Accompong and other Maroon groups. Indeed, the treaty that generated Maroon lands,

considered an historical anachronism by the colonial state, remained fully intact.

This dissertation examined why the circumstances of post-emancipation

Jamaica could not undermine the Maroon communities. Using the Accompong as a

case study, I showed that Maroons were actually able to expand their land holdings.

The Jamaican government failed to get the Accompong to cede their communal land

holdings because it could not use force to require the Accompong to distribute the

communal treaty lands to individuals. The Jamaican government was unable to

enforce the new version of the rule of law, the Land Allotment Act.3

The Accompong never referred to the treaty as the “rule of law,” or even made

their claims in legal terms, yet they insisted that the Jamaican government follow the

unbreakable treaty as the rule of law, and adhere to the terms as delineated in the oral

version negotiated between the British and the Accompong.4 The government spoke of

                                                                                                               2 Cooper, Holt, and Scott. For the specifics of the Jamaican case, see Holt; Satchell. 3 The one time when the colonial government could claim a military success against a Maroon group in the Second Maroon Wars reflects that they were won on the basis of deception, not military defeat as the Jamaican government promised the Trelawney Maroons that they would renegotiate the treaty and instead placed them on boats for deportation to Nova Scotia. The basis on which the Second Maroon Wars ended only reinforced to the Jamaican government that winning a military conflict against the Maroons was, at best, a very difficult proposition. 4 Zips argues that there was a perception problem in the final terms of the agreements between the Maroons and the governmental officials with whom they dealt. While Accompong oral history suggests one interpretation that the treaty had been altered after the fact, Zips, also posits that “it is conceivable

  229  

Cooks Bottom (1868), Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions (1870), Fullerswood (1884), and

Strathdon (1895) in legal terms that reflected the government’s framework for

understanding such disputes, namely British land laws. The Accompong insisted that

the government follow their original understanding of the treaty that justified

expanding their land holdings from the 1500 stated acres to the 15,000 the government

deprived them of.5 The treaty also provided the Maroons communal and not individual

land grants and exempted them from paying land taxes. Further, the Accompong tried

to broaden their land possessions by asserting land ownership through “adverse

possession.” They continued to expand their land holdings by ignoring the Land

Allotment Act. While the Accompong never gained lands from Falmouth to Black

River, they pushed the borders of their usable land to the north where Cooks Bottom

was located, and to the southwest, the location of Strathdon.

Through the late 1900s, the treaty retained its importance, despite the

emancipation of the formerly enslaved. At the dawn of the 20th century, each of the

Maroon groups, but specifically the Accompong, were no more a part of the “negroe”

community than they ever were, and their treaty continued to set the terms by which

the Jamaican government dealt with them: the treaty remained the rule of law.

Sources, Temporality, and Interdisciplinarity

Werner Zips in his book Nanny’s Asafo Warriors: The Jamaican Maroons’

African Experience, makes the point that the primary documents kept by the Jamaican

                                                                                                               that the Maroon chief was not familiar with the British unit of land measurement in 1739; on the other hand, the figure could have been altered after the fact.” Zips, 202. 5 This narrative is the Accompong’s hidden transcript – the agenda of land acquisition that was concealed from the Jamaican colonial government.

  230  

government revealed an ideological function and purpose of portraying Maroons in a

particular way, namely savage, ungovernable, and dangerous people.6 One reason for

this portrayal was because the British had to justify the institution of slavery.

However, the British also were engaged in face saving: the notion that they would

have to negotiate a treaty with “inferiors” required ensuring that Jamaica’s political

actors, including the Colonial Secretary, the Governor, and members of the Jamaican

Assembly, knew that the Maroons were subservient to the British in agreeing to the

treaty; however the British had sought the peace treaty with the Maroons.7

In attempting to understand Maroon actions, it is critical to use placemaking

narratives to make sense of these mid-19th century disputes about Maroon lands. The

portrayal of the Maroons in the British sources fails to convey the Accompong

perspective and discussions regarding land disputes. This work was “animated by a

constant attentiveness to meaning . . . to the process of producing histories . . . to

relationships between the author and [her] historical subjects, or process of knowing . .

. and to problems of form and ‘catching experience whole.’”8 While the narratives I

collected and relied on do not speak directly to these particular land conflicts, they are

critical in interpreting the actions of the Maroons.

The Accompong believed that they, based on their tactics in the Maroon Wars,

could overcome any obstacle together as a community. They also believed that their

treaty won land grant was severely undermined and needed to be restored. The treaty

                                                                                                               6 Zips, 26. 7 Ibid. 8 Price, xvi - xvii.

  231  

was (and remains) the fundamental document that defines the community and its

dealings with the government. This includes the inability of the Jamaican government

to tax them; one sovereign cannot tax another without mutual agreement.9 It is these

conclusions drawn from the Maroon Wars and that form the basis of the Maroons’

hidden transcript that I bring to the fore to understand their actions. The archival

documents do little more than portray them as child-like non-tax paying thieves as far

as the Jamaican government was concerned.

The sources upon which I relied raise two interrelated issues concerning

temporality. First, can oral histories collected in the twenty first century provide a set

of motives explaining the Accompong’s actions concerning land acquisition? The

second question regarding the Accompong concerns how does the past always play a

role in the present. To answer the first question, while my familiarity with these

narratives came about fairly recently, I feel comfortable in relying on them to interpret

19th century actions in part because the same narratives were shared in the 1930s and

likely before. They are the definitive narratives for the creation of the Accompong

community that comprise a longstanding verbal archive of Accompong history.10 One

might think that these narratives would change over time; however, they demonstrate a

                                                                                                               9 Zips argues, as I have in this work, “the land grant or the acknowledgement of territorial suzerainty constitutes the fundamental premise of their social existence and political autonomy. They understand their common ownership of land to be the backbone of their sovereignty. This is the main reason the Maroons see the peace treaty as the founding document of their ‘nation’ or the ‘sacred charter’ of their ‘state.’” Zips, 200. 10 Archibald Cooper, "Draft of a Paper, " Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. In this paper, Cooper recants the placemaking narratives about Peace Cave, Old Town, and the Kindah tree. Archibald Cooper, "Handwritten Notes About Quaco Killing Young Males in Accompong, Nanny Dodging the British Bullets, and Other Narratives, March 22, 1939," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica.

  232  

stunning degree of stability. The Archibald Cooper papers housed in the University of

the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica provide evidence of this stability. Archibald

Cooper, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago in anthropology in the 1930s,

decided to study the Accompong Maroons by living with them. He collected a series

of the Accompong’s oral narratives and observed their customs during the late

1930s.11 The narratives he recorded matched those related to me during my visits to

Accompong and include the presence of the first-timers in the cottonwood tree in Old

Town; a place he says was called Ambush Cave, and later renamed Peace Cave, where

the Maroons ambushed the British and for the Accompong, was a place that forced the

end of the Maroon Wars. The narratives regarding Nanny catching bullets in her

buttocks; and the description of sealing of the treaty between the Jamaican

government and the Accompong Maroons also matched. It is not happenstance that

Cooper in the 1930s and myself and other scholars encountered the same narratives

about the creation of the Accompong community; these narratives reverberate because

they are the definitive community building narratives for the Accompong.12 As such,

they function as a stable, intersecting archive from which scholars can construct fuller

Accompong histories.

A second question related to temporality concerns the following: “The tie

between the relatively mundane present and the sacred past is concretely expressed

                                                                                                               11Cooper, "Handwritten Notes About Quaco Killing Young Males in Accompong, Nanny Dodging the British Bullets, and Other Narratives, March 22, 1939," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. 12 The scholars who reflect these narratives in their work include Jean Besson, Kenneth Bilby, and Werner Zips. See generally Besson; Bilby; Zips.

  233  

also by certain landmarks which are associated with the wartime period.”13 As

embedded in the definition of placemaking narratives, history, for the Accompong, is

not just a place and an event, but also a series of lessons to be deduced from the events

and the place for the community. Those lessons are always applied to the present

situation: the true boundaries of Accompong, for example, according to the

Accompong community, were (and are still) part of what the Accompong dealt with

vis-à-vis the Jamaican government in post-emancipation Jamaica. History is lived and

is always to be made right. Therefore, the placemaking narrative enters as the

Accompong’s hidden transcript because the past is always a part of the present.

“Especially with regard to the Maroons, knowledge of the first-time constitutes

symbolic capital that can be brought into play with regard to both internal political

struggles and external relations to the Jamaican state. For that reason, analyses of the

past always also contain interpretations of the present and the future.”14

To complete this discussion about sources and why they are used the way they

are throughout this work, it is critical to address the interdisciplinary approach taken.

Above, I addressed the issue of making sense of the Accompong’s motives with

placemaking narratives and the importance of ethnography to this work. An historical

work relies heavily on archival documents to identify the land struggles between the

Accompong and the Jamaican state; Accompong oral histories do not reveal these

debates to outsiders. Making sense of the archival documents, both for what the

                                                                                                               13 Archibald Cooper, "A Negro Village in Jamaica: Conflict, Integration & Acculturation, " Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. 14 Zips, 45.

  234  

Jamaican government was trying to achieve, and for the way the Accompong did the

things they did, had to incorporate other disciplinary frameworks. The documents

often include a discussion of the Accompong misusing land, but it is hard to

understand what that meant. Overrunning one’s land, or squatting as it is often called,

does not reflect the stakes without the specific legal definition of the problem. The

activities required to squat and the time period helped to define the stakes: that the

Accompong had used the land appropriately for such long periods of time that the

Jamaican government could generally not stop the Accompong from actually

acquiring it.

Finally, we also learn the terms of the law the Accompong were concerned

with and can understand what the stakes were in ensuring that the colonial state abided

by the treaty. While the Jamaican government tried to bring about change over time,

indeed it was the rule of law that frustrated that task. This history made little sense

without the law because the documents made little sense without the law.

Resistance

Forms of resistance examined in this work were much more pragmatic than I

had initially assumed and finely tuned to the circumstances in which the Accompong

found themselves. I anticipated that the Accompong would use a form of cultural

resistance, resistance that would handle the government’s play for Accompong land

with their religious and cultural beliefs, such as the use of Science. However, although

not surprising, the Accompong kept this part of themselves from being seen, which

raises the question of in what sort of resistance did the Accompong engage? For this

  235  

work, resistance began in 1842 when the Accompong simply ignored the steps the

colonial government had taken to enact the Land Allotment Act. Few, if any of the

Accompong, signed up for their individual allotments of land so that the land

remained communally held.

The Accompong consistently caused a ruckus when the government sent a

surveyor to ascertain the boundaries of their land. The Accompong were rightly

concerned that the surveys would purposefully misstate the amount of land held by the

community and that the surveys would be a tool in decreasing the amount of land they

held. Further, after these aborted surveys, the Accompong resisted by continuing to

use the land in question contrary to the ownership dictated by the colonial state.

Additionally, the Accompong released the stock belonging to them that had been

seized for failure to pay taxes.

The Accompong were not beyond making veiled or explicit threats of warfare

either, as seen with their insistence that Fullerswood belonged to the community. The

Accompong were not shy in asserting that they did not want to breach the peace;

however, the conclusion one can draw from this statement was that if the Jamaicans

breached the peace, they would be forced to take actions to restore it.

The Accompong also took political action to resist the agenda of the Jamaican

government. The government, in dealing with Fullerswood, decided to appoint

Colonels as headmen, expecting headman to implement the agenda set by the Land

Allotment Act. However, the Maroons mobilized their own political process, making

it clear to the Jamaican government that they were still a community, led by people of

  236  

their choosing. Therefore, the Accompong rejected Colonels as headmen who tried to

advance the government’s agenda so that an agenda of diminished Maroon land

holdings would not be able to take hold from within the community. The political

process is a way of registering discontent with another actor’s measures, a way of

resisting the implementation of another actor’s particular policies. The Accompong

certainly did this: when they voted out a particular Colonel, attempts to implement

individual land holdings connected with efforts to implement the colonial

government’s tax regime were hindered. Lastly, what was (and still is) unique about

the Accompong is that they used their own political process to register their discontent

about Jamaica’s insistence on discontinuing treaty granted community lands. It would

be resistant if the community decided to press Jamaican elected officials to back away

from their policy objectives vis-à-vis the Accompong. Instead, they not only rejected

the policy objective, but also the officials charged with bringing these policy

objectives to fruition, and decided that only the community could bring about change

they, as a community, believed in.

Finally, the Accompong fought and rioted when the government sent a

representative, either a government employee or members of the clergy, to try to

explain their land tenure and ownership in ways that did not comport with Accompong

historic understanding of the land. As a result, it became impossible for the

government to enforce any new “agreements” about Maroon land. Such outward,

physical demonstrations must have reinforced in the minds of governmental officials

that the possibility of warfare was real, that Maroons were in fighting form, a form of

  237  

resistance that was unaffordable to the government. These displays underscored the

resistant history the government had with the Maroons and thereby reinforced how

little appetite the government had to use all means at its disposal to advance their

agenda regarding Maroon land holdings.

The Accompong’s resistance to the colonial government’s reworking their land

holdings from 1842 - 1905 reflected a theme in the literature about slave resistance.

The enslaved utilized the forms of resistance that posed the least risk to their

communities. If all the enslaved could do was foot dragging, indeed, this was the form

of resistance they turned to. If they could engage in all out Revolution, they would do

that.15 If not, those resisting would use means that were just shy of that. While the

Jamaican government feared warfare with the Accompong, war was not the first way

the Accompong were going to make sure the government did not encroach on their

lands. The Accompong either did not think it would be necessary to declare all out war

or did not think it would have been a useful situation for whatever reasons. They knew

that all they needed to do was threaten this form of resistance because the Jamaican

government would not use force to counter their threat.

Naturally, examining resistance from sources compiled by the Jamaican

government can be an endeavor fraught with cues ripe for misinterpretation. Jamaican

governmental officials, from the time they had their first contact with Maroon

                                                                                                               15 Genovese writes that “[i]f a people, over a protracted period, finds the odds against insurrection not merely long but virtually certain, then it will choose not to try.” Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 7. I would add, given the case of the Accompong that those who resist only choose the means that best handles the situation. If something short of all out warfare could accomplish what the Accompong wanted, then they would use that solution.

  238  

populations, often put the most hostile veneer on Maroon actions: they were perceived

as little more than “savages.” Certainly these perceptions of the Maroons did not shift

simply because they were in the post-emancipation era and so descriptions such as

rioting must be read with a grain of salt. Doubtless the Accompong showed their upset

with the government for trying to further manipulate their lands. Whether that

amounted to rioting, we do not know. Regardless of whether this is what the

Accompong did, it may have been one of the reasons why the Jamaican government

did not take stronger actions to force the Accompong to accept the government’s

definitions of their borders and to pay taxes.

Rule of Law

The challenges between the Accompong and the colonial Jamaican state

demonstrated that the law does not exist simply as a neutral tool to ensure that society

goes well. While the Jamaican government had no intent to neutrally apply the law to

any “negroe,” Maroons included, the treaty protected Maroons from discriminatory

applications of the law. Critical legal theorists argue that the law has particular

political goals that become apparent in the practice of law.16 The political intent

concerning the laws applied to all “negroes” at that time is apparent in the

correspondence from the Colonial Secretary discussing application of the laws

granting freedom to the formerly enslaved.17 Laws targeting “negroe” populations in

post-emancipation societies were designed to ensure that the formerly enslaved

                                                                                                               16 See generally Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1987); Kairys, ed; Williams. 17 Glenelg papers.

  239  

remained a captive workforce. Land ownership played a part in accomplishing this

goal, without land, peasants would have to support themselves by working for

someone else. Indeed, this situation infuriated the formerly enslaved and in Jamaica

and led to the 1862 Morant Bay Rebellion.

Members of the peasantry across the Caribbean engaged in such resistance as

well so that they could have control of their labor through land.18 While the Maroons

were not part of a singular community with the formerly enslaved, that agenda was

being foisted on them as well, the government sought to divest the Maroon

communities of land so that they would be forced to be part of the larger labor force.

The Jamaican government then tried to rid the Maroons of their lands by adding

conditions to further land acquisition, the Accompong were supposed to continue to

have access to both Cooks Bottom and Strathdon only if they decided not to hold the

land as a community and if the individual owners who were formerly Accompong paid

taxes on those lands.

The Accompong ignored the conditions and continued to use the land as they

had over time (growing produce and running cattle), and continued cultural uses of the

land that interfered with others using the land (burying Captain Levose on Strathdon).

Further, Jamaica’s White population had validated Accompong use of the land. For

instance, with the Watsons who owned Strathdon, Watson, Sr. had allowed the

Accompong to keep part of Strathdon for their cattle. In addition to their taxes being in

arrears, de facto Accompong ownership of Strathdon was the legal obstacle the

                                                                                                               18See generally Cooper, Holt, and Scott.

  240  

Jamaican government kept encountering as they tried to divest the Accompong of

Strathdon. Hence, the law in practice undermined the rule of law.

Further, the Accompong could be successful with modest land acquisition

because of the type of force needed to enforce Jamaica’s land laws for Maroons as

opposed to the “negroe” population. The Black peasantry faced an armed police force

that drove them off lands where the state thought they had “squatted.” The peasantry

was not an independent armed body. However, the Maroons were a completely

different story. They were sovereign because of the treaty (although the Jamaican

government consistently tried to undermine their sovereign nature). As sovereigns,

military power would have to be brought to bear to enforce the law against them and

force them off of lands owned by adverse possession. Given the past military history

between the Maroons and the Jamaican government, the Jamaican government and its

supporters in London were unwilling to use that sort of power to enforce the law.

As a result, the rule of law, in practice, really did apply to the Maroons and

adverse possession could work. Law, in and of itself, could not change landholding

arrangements with the Accompong, in part because they did not regard Jamaican laws

about them as legitimate. Enforcement of the law is the key ingredient for any

government to implement its legal vision and it was this enforcement that was sorely

lacking with the Accompong.

The ability of the Jamaican government to tax the Accompong population was

also undermined so that taxation laws could not be applied to the Accompong. The

rule of law saw to it that the Black peasantry was taxed at higher rates than the planter

  241  

class because of Jamaica’s regressive taxation system. Both the rule of law and

practice were in sync as applied to the question of taxation. However, taxation was an

example where customary treatment of the Accompong created a separate law for this

community and ran against Jamaican law, although arguably, a policy of not taxing the

Accompong complied with the treaty. The government was determined to collect taxes

from the Accompong because of their land holdings, which according to the Land

Allotment Act should have been held individually. Nevertheless, after the treaty had

passed the Jamaican Assembly, the Jamaican government never collected taxes from

the Accompong for anything. This created both a practice of not collecting taxes from

the Maroons and customary law so that the Maroons could not be taxed: there was no

precedent for tax collection in spite of any law in place.

The treaty, by virtue of the sort of document a treaty is, also suggested that

there was no basis on which to tax the Accompong or any other Maroon group. There

was no explicit agreement for taxing the Accompong. The conduct of the Jamaican

government suggests that they did not see the Maroons as a sovereign people, indeed

the basis of passing a Land Allotment Act and amendments reinforced the

government’s perception that they were not sovereign. The Accompong used the

treaty to justify their stance of not being taxed by Jamaica. Again, the Jamaican

government, to enforce its newly developed taxation policy on the Accompong, would

have had to use military force to get the Accompong to comply, assuming that the use

of force would have been successful.

  242  

Ultimately, there were three bases on which the Accompong bypassed the

implementation of the rule of law on their communities as it concerned taxation: (1)

the custom between the colonial Jamaican state and the Maroons was one of no

taxation and this customary practice created law; (2) secondly, there was no explicit

agreement about taxation in the treaty and therefore no power in that document to tax

the Maroons; and (3) finally, the colonial Jamaican government was unwilling to use

the necessary military force to enforce the laws about taxation with the Maroons. The

government remembered how difficult it was fighting the Maroons and concluded that

it was not worth the expense, both in currency and in lives.

Must Power Be Part of the Hidden and Public Transcript?

James Scott’s thesis about public and private transcripts is compelling when

describing the relationship between the powerful and the less powerful, often in the

guise of the peasantry and landowners.19 In this examination of the Accompong

Maroons, power was at the center of the conflicts. Fundamentally because of the

historical way the Jamaican government and the Maroon communities built their

relationship, namely through warfare and then a treaty, the government was unable to

reconfigure its relationship to the Maroon communities because it was unwilling to

reengage in warfare, reflecting the powerlessness of the Jamaican government.

Nonetheless, both public and private transcripts were at play between these two

communities even as the Accompong did not see themselves as subordinates to the

Jamaican government. At one point, the Accompong argued that they were unwilling

                                                                                                               19 Scott.

  243  

to deal with the Jamaican government about the treaty because they would only deal

with the Queen, someone who was truly their equal.20 The hidden transcript arose

because of the culture of secrecy that was and still is embedded in the Maroon

community. This secrecy is certainly evident in the placemaking narratives about the

Maroon Wars: the Accompong came to the conclusion that outsiders would harm them

and sell them out. Therefore, few things about the community would be revealed to

outsiders. The hidden transcript was created as a strategic matter, not because they

were not the social and military equals of the Jamaican government and their

counterparts in Britain.

                                                                                                               20 Henry Octavius Rowe, "Letter to Anthony Musgrave About the Arrest of Two Maroons and Seizing Their Mules, October, 1882," 1B/57/6/33/3 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Kingston.

  244  

Works Cited

Banton, Michael. Racial Theories. Second ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1998. Reprint, 1998. Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western

Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Bell, Derrick. Race, Racism, and Ameriacn Law. Boston: Little, Brown & Company,

1980. Reprint, Second. ________. And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. New York:

Basic Books, Inc., 1987. Besson, Jean. "Sacred Sites, Shifting Histories: Narratives of Belonging, Land and

Globalisation in the Cockpit Country, Jamaica." In Caribbean Narratives of Belonging: Fields of Relations, Sites of Identity, edited by Jean Besson and Karen Fog Olwig, 17 - 43. Oxford: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2005.

Bilby, Kenneth. "Swearing by the Past, Swearing to the Future: Sacred Oaths,

Alliances, and Treaties among the Guianese and Jamaican Maroons." Ethnohistory 44, no. 4 (1997): 655 - 689.

________. True-Born Maroons. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2006. Blake, Lady. "The Maroons of Jamaica." North American Review, November 1898,

559 - 568. Brathwaite, Kamau. The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1971. Brown, Vincent. The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic

Slavery. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Bryan, Patrick. The Jamaican People, 1882 - 1902: Race, Class and Social Control.

London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1991. Carey, Bev. The Maroon Story: The Authentic and Original History of the Maroons in

the History of Jamaica. 1490 - 1880. St. Andrew: Agouti Press, 1997. Reprint, 2001.

  245  

Carney, Judith A. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Cooper, Frederick, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott. Beyond Slavery:

Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

daCosta, Emilia Viotti. Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave

Rebellion of 1823. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Dallas, Robert Charles. The History of the Maroons, from Their Origin to the

Establishment of Their Chief Tribe at Sierra Leone, Including the Expedition to Cuba for the Purpose of Procuring Spanish Chasseurs and the State of the Island of Jamaica for the Last Ten Years with a Succinct History of the Island Previous to That Period. Vol. 1. 2 vols. London: Cass, 1803. Reprint, 1968.

Dictionary, Oxford English, http://www.oed.com. ________, Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Dubois, Laurent. "Avenging America: The Politics of Violence in the Haitian

Revolution." In The World of the Haitian Revolution, edited by David Patrick Geggus and Norman Fiering, 111 - 124. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.

Edwards, Bryan. The Proceedings of the Governor and Assembly of Jamaica, in

Regard to the Maroon Negroes: Published by Order of the Assembly. Connecticut: Negro Universities Press, 1796. Reprint, 1970.

________. An Historical Survey of the Island of Saint Domingo Together with an

Account of the Maroon Negroes in the Island of Jamaica; and a History of the War in the West Indies in 1793 and 1794. London: John Stockdale, 1801.

Farnsworth, E. Allan. Contracts. Second ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 199 Gardner, William James. A History of Jamaica: From Its Discovery by Christopher

Columbus to the Present Time: Including an Account of Its Trade and Agriculture; Sketches of the Manners, Habits, and Customs of All Classes of Its Inhabitants; and a Narrative of the Progress of Religion and Education in the Island. London: Elliot Stock, 1873.

  246  

Genovese, Eugene. From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.

Gifis, Steven H., Law Dictionary. New York:Barron's, 1984. ________, Law Dictionary. New York:Barron's Legal Guides, 1984. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1993. Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African

Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Gordon, Shirley C. God Almighty Make Me Free: Christianity in Preemancipation

Jamaica. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Heuman, Gad. "The Killing Time": The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica. London:

Macmillan, 1994. Holt, Thomas. The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor and Politics in Jamaica and

Britain, 1832 - 1938. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Hudson, Nicholas. "From "Nation" to "Race": The Origin of Racial Classification in

Eighteenth-Century Thought." Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 3 (1996): 247 - 264.

Kairys, David, ed. The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique. New York: Pantheon

Books, 1982. Kelley, Robin. Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban

America. Boston: Beacon, 1997. Kelley, Robin D.G. Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class. New

York: The Free Press, 1996. Kelley, Tiffany Ruby Patterson and Robin D. G. "Unfininshed Migrations: Reflections

on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World." African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 11 - 45.

  247  

Kingdom, United. In Explanation of the Measures Adopted by Her Majesty's Government for Giving Effect to the Act for the Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Colonies, 1838. Vol. V.

Kopytoff, Barbara. "The Maroons of Jamaica; an Ethnohistorical Study of Incomplete

Polities, 1655 - 1905." University of Pennsylvania, 1973. ________. "Colonial Treaty as Sacred Charter of the Jamaican Maroons."

Ethnohistory 26, no. 1 (1979): 45 - 64. Long, Edward. The History of Jamaica, or General Survey of the Antient and Modern

State of That Island: With Reflections on Its Situations, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws and Government. Vol. 2. 3 vols. London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1774. Reprint, 1970.

________. The History of Jamaica, or General Survey of the Antient and Modern

State of That Island: With Reflections on Its Situations, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws and Government. Vol. 1. 3 vols. New York: Arno Press, 1774. Reprint, 1972.

Lucock, Benjamin. Jamaica: Enslaved and Free. London: The Religious Tract

Society, 1846. Mair, Lucille Mathurin. A Historical Study of Women in Jamaica: 1655 - 1844.

Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2006. Mamdani, Mahmood. "Historicizing Power and Responses to Power: Indirect Rule

and Its Reform." Social Research 66, no. 3 (1999): 859 - 886. "Map of Jamaica", World Books.com

http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/caribb/jm.htm (accessed 22 December 2009).

"The Maroons of Jamaica." Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and

Politics., February 1860. Paton, Diana. No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamacan State

Formation, 1780 - 1870. Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2004. Price, Richard. Alabi's World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Robinson, Phil. "The Maroons of Jamaica." Harper's Weekly, October 29 1896.

  248  

Rodney, Walter. History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881 - 1905. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.

Satchell, Veront. "'Squatters of Freeholders?' The Case of Jamaican Peasants During

the Mid-19th Century." The Journal of Caribbean History 23, no. 2 (1989): 164 - 177.

________. From Plots to Plantations: Land Transactions in Jamaica, 1866 - 1900.

Mona: University of the West Indies, 1990. Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1990. Sheller, Mimi. Democracy after Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Rebellion in

Postemancipation Haiti and Jamaica. London: University Press of Florida, 2001.

"The Sligo Papers: An Official View." Jamaica Journal 17, no. 3 (1984): 11 - 17. Society, The British Council Royal Geographical. Photos and Phantasms: Harry

Johnston's Photographs of the Caribbean. London: The British Council Royal Geographical Society, 1998.

Stern, Steve. "New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion and Consciousness:

Implications of the Andean Experience." In Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, edited by Steve Stern, 3 - 25. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. Unidentified. Minutes from the Legislative Council Meeting. ________. Minutes from a Legislative Council Meeting Dated 23 October 1885, 1885. ________. Minutes from the Legislative Concil Meeting Dated March 27, 1896. ________. Minutes from Legislative Concil Meeting Dated April 19, 1898. ________. Minutes from Meeting Dated 19 May 1899, 1899.

  249  

Vogel, Ursula. "When the Earth Belonged to All: The Land Question in Eighteenth-Century Justifications of Private Property." Political Studies XXXVI (1988): 102 - 122.

Williams, Patricia. The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1991. Wilmot, Swithin R. "Emancipation in Action: Workers and Wage Conflict in Jamaica

1838 - 1840." Jamaica Journal 19, no. 3 (1986): 55 - 62. Zips, Werner. Nanny's Asafo Warriors: The Jamaican Maroons' African Experience.

Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2011.